


Capitol Punishment

by KingAlanI



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, F/M, Family, Other, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Teen Pregnancy, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:10:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingAlanI/pseuds/KingAlanI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the Capitol addressed District Twelve’s lax law enforcement sooner? Could the likes of Snow stay in power, or is a successful rebellion inevitable?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Promotion

(Romulus Thread)

 

            I’ve been a commissioned officer in Panem’s Peacekeeper force for several years, but I still wasn’t used to being summoned to the Head Peacekeeper’s quarters. The Capitol trusted particularly loyal soldiers with assignment to their home districts, and a few years ago I had been transferred to my birthplace of District Eight. At the time, I was a captain, in charge of nearly one and a half hundred men. Now I was a lieutenant colonel, in charge of slightly over four hundred of this country’s finest.

 

            I knocked on the Head Peackeeper’s door and announced “Lieutenant Colonel Thread reporting to Colonel Weaver’s quarters as ordered”.

            “Enter, Lieutenant Colonel,” an unfamiliar yet very familiar voice answered. _What is President Snow doing here?_

            I opened the door to see the old man with his majestic white beard flanked by two Peacekeeper guardsmen. This elite force wore black and light brown uniforms instead of the standard pure white. Colonel Weaver also stood quietly in the background. I addressed him with “Mister President, I trust we owe the honor of your presence to a Head Peacekeeper promotion.”

            “That is correct, Soldier Thread,” he answered.

            “So what’s happening to Colonel Weaver?” I asked. _If Snow wanted me to replace him, I wondered where he was going._

            “Nothing,” Snow said. “You’re being sent to District Twelve. Panem needs you out there,” he explained.

            “Sir, yes sir,” I replied crisply, as if I was a recruit answering a training officer.

            “Your soon to be predecessor Walter Cray has neglected his duty in favor of drinking and whoring,” Snow continued.

            “I am a sober virgin, sir,” I barked.

            “Illegal behavior has proliferated in his mental absence,” Snow explained. “Four and a half years ago, I had mine security rig an explosion to take out a few of the most notorious troublemakers. My covert and surgical approach to ensuring law and order in District Twelve hasn’t worked, and I intend to address that before it fails further. You’re just the man to implement open and wide-ranging methods.”

            “That I am, sir,” I agreed.

            “You are to be in place well before this year’s Reaping…” _Which is only a month away._ “…Mayor Miles Undersee is also guilty of ignoring or tolerating lawlessness. You have my authorization to deal with him as you see fit.” _That was one of the few limitations of a Head Peacekeeper’s authority in his district – he needed approval to deal with the mayor, his family and his staff._

            “I think a 6.59x42-sized solution may be in order,” I joked, referring to the cartridge size taken by our main battle rifles.

            “I like your thinking, _Colonel_ Thread,” he said, emphasizing my new rank. “The 12 th Peacekeepers will be reinforced to regiment strength by your battalion and a battalion of recruits. Colonel Weaver, the 8th Peacekeepers will be restocked by a unit rotating out of 11.” _The Brigade of 11 th Peacekeepers had tough duty controlling that massive horde of unruly farmers, so Colonel Weaver was getting some good men. I had just received a difficult posting myself, and I would need the good men of my unit._

            “With Soldier Cray as my subordinate, I believe a similar solution may be in order,” I offered.

            “Exactly, but don’t blame his subordinates for the poor leadership they received before your arrival. However, once you set up shop, crack down on any Peacekeeper or civilian malfeasance to the fullest extent of the law.” _Surely not all of the Battalion of 12 th Peacekeepers were degenerates, and even if they problem ran deep, they’d be outnumbered by the new arrivals._

            “Of course, Mister President,” I answered. “Also, who will be District 12’s new Mayor?”

            “My intelligence says good things about one Fergus Larkin, assuming he handles the change in Head Peacekeeper well,” Snow nominated. He handed me the paperwork, and I’d personally present Mr. Larkin with the appointment.

 

            Snow demanded this be done quickly, and it was. The 2nd Battalion of the 8th Peacekeeper Regiment, now the 1st Battalion of the 12th Peacekeeper Regiment, was entirely loaded onto transport trains that evening. District Twelve was near District Eight, and one set of train tracks went directly there. We arrived the night of July 1st, now the morning of July 2nd.

 

            The officers’ barracks was just as easy to find in District Twelve. I handed my own letter of appointment to Cray and barked “You have been relieved”. He surrendered his Head Peacekeeper uniform; it looked better on me and I wouldn’t dishonor it. Executing him in private wouldn’t have much effect, so I issued him a standard uniform while building up to the public spectacle. Mayor Undersee wasn’t yet told about his impending death either. However, I confined both Cray and Undersee to the Justice Building for the time being.

 

            The new mayor and the old one each had a wife and daughter; Undersee’s family members were officially guests of the Larkins in the mayoral house for now.

 

            That afternoon, I saw a young man and woman brazenly strolling through the woods around the district. Evading the district security fence to get out there was a major crime in and of itself, but what they were carrying betrayed an even worse offense – poaching off the Capitol’s lands. I understood food supply was one way the Capitol exercised its control over the people of Panem. I remembered the propaganda lines about how rejecting the Capitol’s food supply inherently meant rejecting the Capitol’s mercy and wise leadership. They both had the fairly dark skin, black hair and gray eyes common in The Seam, the dregs of District Twelve’s population.

 

I put them under arrest as soon as they crossed to the meadow inside the fence. I would have to talk with the District Five liaison about making sure the fence was fully electrified in the future. They were genuinely surprised that the law was actually being enforced as they were dragged to a different cell in the Justice Building. My best men were organized as the support squad of the 1st Company of the 1st Battalion, and they were doing good work. The man’s admittedly handsome face was particularly sullen; I would especially enjoy bringing the Capitol’s wrath down upon him.

 

Their fathers had been amongst the troublesome miners Snow dealt with, but presenting those deaths as an accident evidently hadn’t gotten the message across.

 

I stayed in the Justice Building instead of my standard quarters to better supervise the prisoners. I heard ‘Gale Thomas Hawthorne’ and ‘Katniss Ingrid Everdeen’ _enjoying_ what little was left of their miserable lives. That wasn’t illegal, since an 18 year old with a 16 year old satisfied age of consent law. They were holding themselves against each other, but I had nothing to hold against them on that account. The next morning, July 3 rd, I was thinking of dragging them to the square. However, when receiving her breakfast gruel, Katniss said “Appeal on the grounds of pregnancy”. I liked most Capitol law; I’d grudgingly enforce the one that banned execution of pregnant women. The support squad of the 1st Battalion 2nd Company was a medical unit; I sent for one of their doctors.

 

I stood outside the cell while the test was performed. “You’re one of the few sixteen year old girls who wants a pregnancy test to come back positive,” the doctor joked. “And it did,” he said plainly. _I understood how the Capitol punished people through their loved ones; losing her boyfriend and babydaddy would be enough for now._ With both her and the rest of the district, I hoped that a few punishments would be enough to deter further offenses, but I would be glad to administer much more if the situation called for it. I would be mindful of past offenses but I would not obsess over them. Such was my law enforcement philosophy.

 

We dragged all three of them to the square the morning of July 4th and tied them to the posts my men had erected for such punishment purposes. At this time of day, the population was still on its way to the mines, school or wherever, so it was easy to herd them into the square to bear witness to justice. Katniss has been let go for now with an obvious unsaid warning, so I found her walking to school with her little sister.

 

I faced Cray and Undersee. “My predecessor and his friend in the Mayor’s office tolerated far too much lawbreaking, and each gave such leadership to their subordinates – treason if intentional, massive incompetence if unintentional,” I intoned. “Either way, their sentences are both death.” I administered both sentences with one shot each, both bullets to the heart for near-instant kills. Cray’s bedwarmers and many of their relatives even cheered his death.

 

I faced the young man. “I understand Gale Hawthorne was one of the more notorious criminal subordinates. For violations of the District Security Act, Anti-Poaching Act, and who knows what else, his sentence is death,” I said before pouring several bullets into him.

 

I had some advice for their families and the rest of the district. “Someone who betrays their nation’s trust has proven they cannot be trusted. They may crow about loyalty to their families, their lovers – but that optional loyalty is nothing compared to the mandatory loyalty all owe their country. Sadly, they have chosen what they want to do over what they must do. Only scum would take such lazy immorality to such a level. Treason does not merit death, treason is death – we will deliver it if the disloyalty continues. Cry for the ones you lost, but remember that they essentially brought it upon themselves – we simply administered the punishment they earned. And if you don’t want to join them, don’t follow their example,” I intoned. “The Capitol has shown mercy by taking a few lives instead of thousands. If you reject that mercy, we will make thousands die again.”


	2. Don't Fear The Reaping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> District Twelve faces the very usual onslaught of this year’s Games, even with the unusual law enforcement. However, many people are occupied with their budding or shrinking personal relationships.

(Rory Hawthorne)

 

            Katniss, her cute little sister and their mother all came to visit our shack. She began by saying “We always thought a quick death from a bullet would be better than a slow death from starvation … or watching you starve”. As she said that, she moved her arm around to point at each of us. “We never thought it would actually happen,” she admitted.

 

Yet it turned out Gale’s death wasn’t the only thing ‘Catnip’ had to talk about. “He gave me something before he was taken away – a child.” All of us seemed surprised by that. “I wish it hadn’t taken losing him to make something happen between us,” Katniss said morosely.

 

“He understood pregnant women couldn’t be executed - well, he didn’t follow Capitol law, but he was aware of what it was,” Katniss explained. “That was brilliant – save me and have a child live on after him,” she continued.

 

“With Gale gone and the woods closed off, we’ll all have to sign up for more tesserae” she suggested. _Gale had taken tesserae for all of us, and now I had to do the same. There were so many ways in which Big Man gave me impossibly large shoes to fill._ “One can take tesserae for their children and children to be, but Reaping-age people don’t usually have families of their own,” Katniss stated.

“That’s usually a good thing,” her mom parried. I understood there were medicines to help women who didn’t want babies. Katniss’ mother and cute sister were both healers who were probably quite interested in that stuff.

“Yeah, the new Head had a Capitol doctor call my bluff, and the doctor joked ‘You’re one of the few sixteen year old girls who wants a pregnancy test to come back positive’,” Katniss answered.

 

“You can’t wallow in your grief with a baby on the way. I would know,” Mom said. _Posy was born right after Dad died, and my newborn sister kept things from being even worse._

“Katniss, I know I was a horrible mother after the mine explosion,” her mother admitted. “I won’t be a horrible grandmother too,” she promised. Prim looked even cuter as she initiated a group hug between the three of them at this tender moment. “Did you two get married?” Prim and Katniss’ mom wondered. “Sadly, a lifetime commitment wouldn’t have been too difficult at that point,” she added.

“No. Traitors can’t get married. The Capitol considers it part of the punishment. They feel if your country can’t trust you, a spouse couldn’t trust you either,” Katniss answered, describing the propaganda with a sarcastic tone of voice Gale had made me very familiar with.

 

I could tell this was one of the most important meetings of our life, and I was distracted by how cute Prim was. Either I wasn’t thinking straight or I was thinking very straight. I’d just go ahead and tell her; that kind of bravery wouldn’t get me killed. She was last out the door when the Everdeens went back home. I successfully caught up with her, and my left hand gripped her right. Prim had an infectiously positive personality, even in these circumstances, and I gamely tried to match her smiles. I played with one of her braided ponytails and asked “Have you ever had a boy tell you you’re cute?”

“No,” she answered.

“Well, I just did, you cutie,” I said as I grinned. The little angel kissed me - I think she just meant to brush my cheeks, but our lips definitely touched.

“Why did Katniss wait so long? This is fun!” Prim wondered.

“It sure is,” I answered. “Mind if I call you Little Duck?” I asked. I knew this was Katniss’ nickname for Prim as ‘Catnip’ had been Gale’s nickname for Katniss.

“Quack,” she said while laughing. It was clearly important that I now got to call her the same nickname her dear sister Katniss used.

“Good, because the ducktail of your shirt hanging out of your skirt waistband is one of the many adorable things about you,” I explained.

 

The rest of the family soon heard about it. “Don’t you know girls are icky?” Vick teased.

“Well, this one certainly isn’t,” I told him.

“Apparently one of my boys loved an Everdeen girl and one still does,” Mom said. I opened my mouth to say something back, but the important word made me hesitate. She sensed my pause and jumped in with “Come on, Rory dear. Even before she kissed you, you couldn’t stop talking about her.” _Well then, I’d tell her that too._

 

The next morning, I went over to her shack to walk to school with her. “Little Duck, I think I love you,” I said. _Speaking of school, our teacher always taught us to start with the key statement and then explain it._ “I see why Gale loved Katniss – both you girls are so smart and so pretty.”

“I think I love you too, Little Man,” she answered. “And you’re like your brothers, clever and handsome,” she added. This time our lips definitely touched on purpose. Katniss and their mom both smiled at us.

 

After Prim and I walked home from school together, Katniss wanted to talk to us. “Prim is going to be very lucky to have someone like Gale in her life. You take after your brother in general – you all know how much he meant to me as a friend over the past few years, and he was such a wonderful lover in the few days we had left. I hope you have more time than we did. May the odds…,” she said.

“…be ever in your favor,” I finished.

She cried a bit. “Sounds like something Gale would say,” she explained through her tears. I actually joined her in sobbing. “He lives on in his brothers…someone else is going to be lucky to have Vick,” she added. “Gale sure put that big thing in his pants to use,” she admitted.

“That sounds almost like girl talk,” Prim teased.

“When you’re old enough to have that deep a connection with a man that deep inside you, you’d understand why I changed my tune so quickly. I hope Rory makes you feel that good some day,” she explained.

  
(Romulus Thread)

 

            If Cray and Undersee could work together against enforcing the law, myself and Larkin could collaborate on furthering the Capitol’s interests, which is what our positions were intended for. Planning for the Reaping was at the forefront of my mind; he was thinking of something afterwards. “A lot of existing couples marry right after their last Reaping,” Mayor Larkin said.

“It’s like that in other districts too,” I answered. “Your point?”

“I wouldn’t feel right officiating weddings with my own marriage on the rocks,” he explained.

I observed that “You and Angela don’t seem particularly distant, but you don’t seem particularly close either”.

“Yes, I haven’t been a bad husband, but I haven’t been a good one either,” he admitted. “I haven’t been adulterous or violent, so she can’t force a divorce on those grounds, but I haven’t agreed to one or made her not want one in the first place.”

His personal problems were distracting him from his duty. _That’s why Peacekeepers were restricted with rules too tough for the rest of Panem._ I advised him to “Get divorced and get back to work”.

To his credit, he took care of it quickly. Angela readily agreed to it, as I thought she would. His father James and daughter Bridget were also at least glad that he was finally being honest. They remained as guests in the Mayor’s house as part of the deal. The former mayor’s daughter Margaret was good friends with that knocked up traitor Katniss; maybe Bridget would be a better influence on her.

 

Reserve forces from out west were usually needed to help Reaping Day run smoothly, but increasing the regular District Twelve garrison from battalion size to regiment size already more than covered my needs. Snow even sent us the Reaping Day supplies early, on the same train as the battalion of recruits from District Two. This included banners, broadcast equipment, and screens to show a film about the importance of the Games and later broadcast the Games themselves.

 

Much of the recruit battalion really was fresh out of training; some of its personnel, especially the officers, had a few months to a couple years in the force. Lieutenant Alexander Hawkins had enlisted last summer after his last Reaping. He came to me bearing some of the Games gear.

 

There weren’t strict rules against fraternization between high-level and low-level commissioned officers, so I started talking to him. He was looking forward to family life after his twenty years were up, like many in the force. _I simply didn’t think about it much._ He was the first of three children his father had after serving. The tradition of service was The Capitol’s favorite part about its veterans’ family life. His sisters were serving in another way, dreaming of becoming Hunger Games Victors. Out here, people feared the Games they would almost certainly die in. In District Two, they recognized the honor. “Maybe Clove would have volunteered this year,” he mused. “I would have liked to be in the tribute escort.”

“It is a great honor to be posted to your home district. It was a highlight of my pre-Head career.” I agreed. “I’m not from Two,” I added, not wanting to give any further details. “I’ll assign your platoon to the tribute escort here, then,” I ordered. Here they might have to drag the miserable little kids who didn’t recognize the glorious honor, courage and sacrifice in being a tribute.

“Sir yes sir,” he said enthusiastically, the only right answer.

“Your service is a great gain to your country, but a great loss to the women of your district,” I told him.

 

I had already executed a Soldier Darius King for defying orders in my cleanup of what remained of District Twelve’s criminal element. His superior, a Lieutenant Purnia, sometimes second-guessed me in an officious manner, and that I could at least respect – even I didn’t know Capitol law perfectly. Most citizens of this benighted district had learned to behave even if they hadn’t before, yet some miscreants hadn’t gotten the message in time or had chosen to ignore it.

 

Some of the black marketers were executed outright. A few more died from injuries sustained in punishments not strictly capital that often ended up that way. I remembered a one-armed alcohol smuggler who collapsed from the lashes on her back after I had personally whipped her. The handle of my whip had a place of honor on my belt next to my pistol and some magazines of battle rifle ammunition. Eventually I had to swing only a few lashes or even just tap the handle to get the Capitol’s authority across.

 

There was an abandoned warehouse called The Hob that had become a center of illegal trade in illegal goods. I had my men put it to the torch. It flared up instantly, since it was coal-infused wood like most of this district. A few stragglers ran out burning and were shot. One of them was identified as Jack Barton, another child of a treasonous coal miner.

 

(Peeta Mellark)

 

The district had nearly lost Katniss earlier this summer, and could lose her again in the imminent next Reaping. The odds weren’t in her favor, since she had taken so many tesserae. I admired how much she did to support her darling sister and grieving mother. I was intimidated by her bravery, doubly so with Gale in the picture. Sadly, he was taken from us for the ‘crime’ of being just as loyal to his family as Katniss was to hers. So she was carrying his child. I’d love it as I loved her. I dreamed about her all the time, whether or not I was sleeping, and that included bearing my children some day. Yet if she was already having his, that day was safely in the future even if the odds were in my favor in the bedroom, the bathroom, or any of the other places where I had thought about making love to her.

 

Katniss brought Prim by the bakery to look at the treats they couldn’t afford, and Prim rushed off to go to the Hawthorne house. The time to tell her was now, finally let her know how I had felt since the start of school nearly eleven years ago. “Katniss, we all know how wrong it is what they did to Gale, but there is another boy who’s always loved you,” I started.

“Who?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Me,” I answered, noticing the surprise on her face in the few seconds of silence. “I have been, ever since the first day of school. Like your mother, once I heard an Everdeen singing voice, I was a goner.”

“I thought he met her selling poached herbs,” Katniss offered. “Well, is that why you gave me bread years ago, because you’d always cared about me?” she guessed, to sort of change the subject.

“Yes,” I answered. It was left unsaid how we could both never forget that day.

“Well, give me a kiss now,” she ordered.

That was an instruction I was glad to follow. Her lips were as sweet as I had imagined. Thread’s thugs had closed off the fence four days ago, but she still had the smell and the taste of the woods on her. _Or was that just my imagination?_

“Your baby will hear beautiful lullabies, but right now your boyfriend wants to hear your gorgeous voice…sing for me, Katniss,” I pleaded. She did. Now that she was in love with me, _The Valley Song_ was even more beautiful than it was the day I had fallen in love with her.

 

Dad had finally worked up the guts to leave Mother. He deserved better, and I think he had found it. Katniss’ mother had experienced a debilitating loneliness since Katniss’ father died. My father was one of many Town men who had fallen in love with her only to see her go off to the Seam with Mr. Everdeen. She came home with him one night in mid-July, the same evening I brought Katniss to the house. We were all too focused on our own significant others to pay much attention to the other couple.

 

It was several days after I had first confessed my love for Katniss. “The fancy cookies and cakes are so beautiful because of your frosting and icing work,” Katniss told me while visiting the bakery yet again.

“Thank you!” I joyously said back. That’s one artistic pleasure my mother hadn’t denied me, because it was ‘useful enough’ to her.

“Could you draw a picture of me?” she asked in such a sweet voice.

“Drawing figures is harder than drawing patterns on pastries, but I can try,” I answered. “Especially with a figure as beautiful as yours.”

“Well, get your paper and pencils.” she said confidently. “I want to be alone with you so you can draw me _naked_ ,” she whispered. _Wow!_ Unfortunately, my penis could not be used as an easel, but it would certainly be hard enough.

Once we closed the door and I put my drawing things down on the table, she put her arms around my shoulders and pulled me close so we could taste each other again. This time, she put her tongue into my mouth, which tasted even sweeter than each others’ lips.

Somehow her clothes had to come off if I was to draw her without them, and we both approached that task eagerly. I untucked her blouse and ran my hands up it, to finally have her firm little breasts under my fingers like I had so often dreamed of. She gasped as I rolled each nipple between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about how to please you,” I explained. She pushed her skirt down and kicked it away while I undid the blouse buttons.

Now my dreams were real – Katniss in my room without clothes. “Gale may have been the first man inside me,” she said. _With you as the second real soon, her aura of confidence indicated._ “but you’re the first to see me like this,” she added.

“What?” I wondered.

“With him, I yanked my pants down just far enough to do the deed quickly, and he pounded me fiercely, as befit the aggressive young man he was,” she answered. _Even if he was better-equipped than I was, he certainly wouldn’t have hurt her, since he had cared about her as much as I still do._ She changed the conversation back to me by saying “Now I want to savor every sweet moment with the gentle young man you are”.

It took all my self-control to sit down and do the drawing she wanted. She also had to work at it to stay still. Yet I was still careful to properly sketch her. Her long dark braid. Her smooth and cheerful face, even darker than the rest of her skin due to many summers out in the sun. Her muscular right arm, developed and required by drawing back a bow – I had long since noticed that it was a bit bulkier than the left. Her lithe legs, from running through the woods. The black hair on them and between them. _I heard some guys couldn’t stand that on a female, but I thought it was wonderful. It helped make her look like a woman instead of a little girl, and heck, I thought most anything about Katniss was beautiful._ The pink between them. The dark brown nipples in the middle of coppery areolae in the middle of bronze breasts.

I blew some graphite dust off the paper, looked at it and said “Finished” to call Katniss over.

“You’re amazing,” she said.

“You were already beautiful; I simply demonstrated that fact,” I said to return the compliment.

“Something in your pants is also demonstrating that,” she purred. _I was only average size, but everything I had was beyond ready for her._ I dropped them as quickly as I could; my undershorts went down with them. She smiled as my manhood finally sprung free for her. I yanked my shirt over my head with equal speed. She lay on the bed with her splayed legs dangling off the edge of it.

I knelt down to kiss her _there_ and she exploded in both juices and squirming. _She loved that but didn’t want to be teased._ I stood up and finally could put my manhood into her womanhood, like I had fantasized about since I knew what that part of my body was for. I held her hips to better thrust into her, and her lower lips gripped my shaft even more tightly. It wasn’t long before I shook and felt my seed pump into her. I did not care that Gale’s had already taken root.

I slid my hands under her back so I could wrap my arms around her waist. I lifted her at arms’ length, and turned around so I could take my turn lying down on the bed. “You’re so strong, and isn’t carrying me much more fun than hauling sacks of flour?” she said. _Her_ mouth on _my_ crotch got me hard again even quicker than I thought. Then she sprung forward to sink her lower lips down onto my pole for the second time in this already amazing evening. I kept on pushing up against her as she pushed down, and as we shook together, she said “I think I underestimated this whole ‘boys’ thing.” She laid down in my arms as I had always dreamed.

“Gale was bigger than me, wasn’t he?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, but you were still big enough to make me happy, very happy,” she said reassuringly. “Besides, I think what matters is the guy it’s attached to – I loved him and I love you.”  
  
(Phillip Mellark – Peeta’s father)

 

            Merchant Section folk were still punished by Thread and his enforcers, but frankly, the relatively well off part of District Twelve wasn’t as affected by the new order of things. Also, I liked the example the new mayor set by getting a divorce that was a long time coming. The paperwork for Priscilla and I was finalized on July 13th. The ex-Mrs. Larkin helped convince her to stop holding onto me for spite’s sake. The boys all stayed with me and would help run the bakery. She moved back in with her parents, for who else would love her at this point?

 

            I had always dreamed about Ingrid Kolster, now Everdeen. Now I was able to make that dream a reality. Peeta finally talking to Katniss had emboldened me to talk to her mother. “Ingrid, I know why my son is so fascinated with your daughter,” I opened. “She’s her father’s daughter, but she takes after you too. You’re both beautiful,” I explained.

            “I was beautiful once,” she said morosely.

            “It’s inexcusable how you were shunned by your ‘family’ and worn down by life in The Seam, but you’ll always be beautiful in these blue eyes.” I saw hers light up. She certainly hadn’t had a man look at and talk to her like that since the mines stole her Jacob over four and a half years ago. I leaned in for a kiss and she more than gave it to me. Her lips met mine, and as I brushed her long dirty blonde hair out of her eyes, I could see that she wanted more. We gripped each others’ hands tightly on the walk towards my house. I almost didn’t notice Peeta walking in ahead of me similarly infatuated with Katniss.

I carried her to my bedroom, which I had slept in alone even since long before the divorce. “Well, I know why my daughter is so enamored with your son. You Mellark men are so tender and gentle, and still so strong. I knew how interested you were, and I was starting to feel a spark again myself. That gave me a few days to get back on birth control,” she said. Then she gave an order I had been waiting most of my life to receive: “Make love to me”.

While we were still standing up, she undid her blouse’s buttons. Even after two decades of the ravages of living in the Seam, her chest still had its special allure. “They can’t kiss back, but you can sure kiss them,” she suggested seductively.

“I think I shall,” I answered. I popped one breast out of her bra and softly sucked on the nipple, then took the other one into my mouth. Once both her orbs had been satisfied, I leaned on the edge of the bed and braced myself with my arms as she sensually stripped. It seems she hadn’t forgotten much in the bedroom, and my penis sure remembered how to respond to a real woman. I took off my own clothes, and I could tell how much she liked my bulge springing into view. I carried her sturdy frame, now with no clothes hanging on it, to the bed. I felt my manhood pressing into her hip and wanted to press it somewhere else as soon as possible. I wrapped her in the blankets and slid in next to her. With blankets on one side and a hot naked body on the other, we each felt alive for the first time in a long while. I climbed on top of her and pushed her legs apart. I felt her crotch and my hand came back covered in her juices, indicating that she couldn’t wait any longer for me to be inside her either.

I lined up my tip with her most personal folds of skin and brought my chest down onto hers as I slowly entered her. She soon arched back against me and squirmed with pleasure, moaning “Phillip…Phillip…Phillip” in a tone of voice unique to these private moments. I kept going in and out of her with tender yet possessive strokes. Soon I spasmed and felt my seed fill her. “I forgot how much I missed this – in a man’s arms with nothing on and nothing but me in his eyes,” Ingrid said as we basked in the afterglow. _That’s what I always dreamed of having with her. I had only a shadow of that with Priscilla even before she turned into the witch I was glad to finally divorce._ Ingrid fell asleep first, and she did look even better when she was resting.

 

Peeta woke us up by knocking and saying “First batch of bread is ready”.

“Let us get dressed,” I mumbled back.

“Us?” he wondered. “Good going, old man!” he shouted back.

“It seems you didn’t lack for an Everdeen woman in your bed either,” I parried.

 

Prim was smarter than the average twelve year old; she had figured out where her mother and sister had gone, and came over bringing cheese from her goat. Peeta said the goat was named Lady, that Katniss had bought it, and that Prim and their mother nursed it back to health. _I gave my son credit for paying such close attention to the girl he loved even though he hadn’t been able to talk to her until recently._ The cheese was so soft it spread like butter, especially after being hit by the steam coming off the bread. The breakfast was normal for us, maybe a bit fancy, but it was a feast for the Everdeens. The bread was to the side of chicken, chopped tomatoes and other vegetables on a bed of noodles.

 

“To the three most beautiful women in District Twelve,” Peeta said while raising his glass of juice.

“I’m still a cute girl to Rory,” Prim announced.

“Just wait until you grow up, looking like your mother and all,” I said. “Him, me and my youngest son are all very lucky guys,” I added.

“Now who gets to tease who about not having a girlfriend?” Peeta jabbed at Pumpernickel, the middle brother.

“Turnabout is fair play, I suppose,” the second of the twins admitted.

“Pump, you can have Delly Cartwright,” Pan the eldest joked.

“Even Peeta didn’t want to date her,” Pumpernickel recognized. “She’s fun to be around, no wonder Peeta spends time with her as a friend, but she doesn’t look all that great,” he assessed.

We all seemed much happier since we came into each others’ lives and some of us came into each others’ genitals. This was all despite the Capitol abuse meted out by Thread and his associates; I wondered how long that would last.

 

(Cato Adams)

 

            Only a couple weeks until the big day, when I become a Tribute, and only a couple more weeks until I become a Victor. It was my destiny to succeed at what my father had died trying to do. My biggest threat would be the girl from my district. Someone like me from District Two, or maybe someone from One or Four, won it most every year. In fact, the District Two female Maria had won last year’s 73rd Games. The odds were in my favor to give us a consecutive pair. My mentor Brutus, a sort of father figure, had won the 43rd Games right after our district’s tall stonemason daughter Lyme won the 42nd. Gloss and Cashmere, siblings from One, were back-to-back Victors when I was seven and eight. The four of them had been the only consecutive pairs from anywhere in Panem at any time in the Games’ history.

 

            Clove Hawkins wanted to fuck me; she would have to settle for fighting me. I kept turning her down because she was a year too young for me. I had plenty of young women slightly older than her in my bed; she was waiting for me to change my mind. _Are you sure you want your first man to be as big as me?_ I wondered in a self-congratulatory manner. I wanted Maria, a lot of the guys and some of the gals at Academy did, but like most attractive Victors, she was busy with Capitol lovers instead of hometown folks.

 

            Mother wanted me to pick one, not a different one every night. I wanted to eventually choose a woman of equal status, not some girl to look down on. My attraction to Maria was about that as much as what shone about her in particular. At six feet two inches tall, I physically looked down on most females, but that was fine. Sometimes I assessed prospects as “I have several inches on her and I want to put several inches in her.”

 

            The more I thought about it, the more Clove seemed like great girlfriend material after all. Her attitude matched my own fiery personality, but she really could be sweet underneath too. We trained for the Games in one of the many caves in District Two’s mountains. Clove happened to leave first one day and I ran after her along the trail. “Spice, I got something for ya,” I announced while laughing to myself.

            “What is it, Big Bad Cato?” she shot back.

            “My lips,” I answered. I wrapped an arm around her and lifted her up to place her face at the same level as mine. Our mouths met, and the way she kissed back, I knew this was no mistake.

            “That was one fiery lip-lock!” she said triumphantly once I put her back down. “So you do love me after all!” she said cheerfully. The hometown females were tough as nails but usually had something girly about them; with Clove, that manifested itself in her crush on me. She also used knives as craft tools on the rare occasions she wasn’t throwing them, and would likely use one of her projects as a token of home once she entered the arena. My token was a gold coin with the District Two seal and my birth year, similar to what my father had used.

“You’re so good in training now, imagine how good you’ll be in the Games when you’re closer to the maximum age,” I told Clove, as I often had. Using my mouth in another way had actually convinced her to wait - with her new boyfriend leading the field, she definitely wouldn’t enter the arena this year.

Her Peacekeeper brother was nowhere to be found; he had been here, but he must have been transferred. Clove had wanted her brother to be here as part of her escort. Maybe he’d be back.

 

Now who would I be going into the arena with? Livia Aurelius II was one of the other good female candidates this year. However, there would be bad blood between us – her mother, the first Livia Aurelius, had killed my father Julius Adams in the arena in order to become a Victor. This would make it even harder to hold the Career Alliance together. Besides, like Clove, she was an underage talent who could afford to wait.

 

In the outer districts, to be a tribute was shameful because of the near-certain death. Here, it was still risky, but glorious. We had many who wanted to volunteer for the Games, and our past Victors voted on who got the honor of trying to join them. I knew I was a shoo-in, so I wasn’t surprised by the 10-1 vote. I figured the dissent came from Livia out of spite for Julius and myself, or to get easier competition for her daughter. Voting on the girls fell into even further disarray once Clove pulled out. I wouldn’t vote for Livia, but her mother and some of the rest would. It narrowly went against her. I’d end up fighting Claudia Eboracum – maybe Lyme won support for another stonemason’s daughter.

 

(President Coriolanus Snow)

 

            The centerpiece of my control over the Districts had arrived, when we took their children and made them glad we didn’t take more.

 

            Two glamorous youngsters stepped forward for One, as usual.

 

I had expected District Two to put forth Livia daughter of Livia. We didn’t get her or any other children of Victors this year, but the son of fallen victor Julius Adams spoke almost too quickly to step forward for Two. Cato was now headed for either Victors Village or his district’s tribute cemetery, where he’d be buried in chronological order instead of alongside his father, interred nineteen years prior.

 

The boy from Four was trying to win even earlier than Finnick had. Some victory Odair had – grudgingly fucking beautiful Capitol women (and men) because he’d rather have that homely crazy fellow-winner girl back home.

 

The boys from Six and Eleven were the only one who had comparable bulk to the male from Two, but they were silly outer-district people who actually believed the ‘law’ against training for the Games.

 

I liked making them die while they were so young – we got one twelve year old, a girl from Eleven. At her first Reaping, she was the _oldest_ of six – can’t those dark farmers control their base sexual urges?

 

District Twelve was divided into a poor town and an even poorer coal miners’ section. They were often angry at each other instead of at the Capitol, that a mix of what they looked like and what they didn’t have. Oddly, we got two kids from the town this year. There were only a few hundred there, compared to several thousand miners and their families, and the town people were just barely well off enough to not need tesserae. So the odds _really_ weren’t in the favor of Delly Cartwright and Pumpernickel Mellark. The new mayor had just gotten divorced and that was his ex-wife’s niece, but I didn’t care about Fergus Larkin’s personal life because of the good work he and Romulus Thread were doing. Sometimes the Games could distract people from the brutally effective law enforcement also present in other areas of the life of Panem. Thread had done brilliantly in finally bringing that to District Twelve. This is how we remember our past, and this is how we safeguard our future.


	3. Pre-Quell Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I revised Chapter 2 - minor expansion and rephrasing of a few scenes, a few typo fixes

(Fergus Larkin)

 

            People lived in fear that the Capitol would make an example of them for the failed rebellion decades ago. To dare complain was one of the very acts of rebellion the Games were designed to be a warning against. My comrade Romulus Thread made sure that message got across. At least this year’s two marched grimly instead of needing to be dragged. One of his soldiers took particular pride in walking the girl up to stage. The girl was my ex-wife’s niece. I had cared for Angela once, certainly enough to accidentally plant Bridget in her, but I had never cared much for the other Cartwrights.

 

            After the fear passed for the rest of their lives, many pairs decided to spend the rest of their lives together. I knew my Justice Building would be awash in paperwork. I set an early alarm to make sure I was in Registration Hall within plenty of time.

 

            I was a recent divorcee, but I spoke to the newlyweds anyway, offering some advice that came from experience. “I can at least advise you on what not to do. Marry her because you love her, not just because you knocked her up.” Well, that wasn’t a problem for the two young men from the Seam standing before me. That pair and the several Seam men marrying women were dressed in pitifully plain clothes.

 

            I was a single man now, but I still remembered the words without hesitation. The last line stood out, as usual. “Will you honor and cherish the one you’ve chosen, throughout all the highs and lows this life presents you with?” _I hadn’t._

            Dozens of voices responded in unison with “I will.”

 

            A legally valid marriage required two witnesses not related to the couple who were themselves of marriageable age. It was traditional for the mayor and his or her spouse to sign as such unless the couple had someone special in mind. Bridget had turned sixteen earlier this summer, old enough for this. After all, I had been sixteen and her mother seventeen when we had stood on the other side of the room. Sixteen year olds could marry no older than eighteen, and seventeen no older than twenty, but no such caveats applied to the witnesses. My father had turned sixteen forty-nine years ago. I was surprised my old man’s left hand didn’t cramp up as he kept filling in that small box on the certificates. James would probably walk Bridget into the hall when her time came. I deserved that slight. He treated his granddaughter better than I treated my daughter, as he reminded me and I admitted. Bridget was really taking after James’ talent for the fiddle too.

 

(Pumpernickel Mellark)

 

            Everyone seemed to like Delly, she was just that kind of person. “You need to get sponsors more so than make friends, but that shiny personality of yours will help all the same,” Haymitch assessed. At least that’s what I think he said through the drunken slurring.

 

            I was her friend’s brother, not her friend himself. “That’s sort of an angle for the audience but not much,” Haymitch said. Then he leaned in to whisper to me. “Besides, it would remind the audience of how much pain Peeta must be in, along with the other folks back home, and that’s the side of the Games the Capitol doesn’t want people to see.” Peeta certainly wouldn’t emerge a victor even if one of us did. At least we both got to see him finally win Katniss’ heart.

 

            “Delly, when the gong goes off, get as far away from the Cornucopia as you can, as quickly as possible,” Haymitch advised. From the look on Delly’s face, one wouldn’t have needed to tell her twice even if it was possible to speak to a tribute in the arena. “Pumpernickel, you’re a strong boy, but even so, stay away from the heart of the Cornucopia, for the Careers are stronger yet.”

 

In school wrestling competitions, the only two people who truly challenged me were my brothers, but the brutal boy from Two looked like he could pin all three of us. Cato was clearly the most dangerous of the competition. Glimmer of One was a classic beauty; Claudia of Two wasn’t, but she had her own charms. Cato seemed to have the discipline to ignore the feminine charms of his competitors. The tall lanky boy from One did not seem so smart. Pumpernickel knew what unrequited love looked like in his brother, and he saw it in Marvel now as Tribute Hoffman gazed at his district partner.

 

Their performance in training was rated on a scale of one to twelve, twelve being highest. Cato led with a ten, followed by his fellow Careers with eights and nines. “No wonder, since they’ve trained for years back home already, an open secret,” Haymitch muttered.

“My seven doesn’t seem so bad,” I answered.

“It’s better than District Twelve usually does, that’s for sure,” Haymitch agreed. Delly’s three was an example, although I hoped for her sake it was an underestimation.

 

The girl from Five seemed quite clever, and I wondered if her smarts would get her as far as Delly’s charm or the brute strength on display elsewhere. Rue was a charming little thing, which took away some of Delly’s spotlight. Her district partner was near as imposing as Cato, more so because Thresh glared silently instead of Cato’s confident charm. Thresh recognized the tragic foolishness of this whole affair, while Cato was participating fully in it.

 

The arena was a forest that reminded me of what I’d seen through the fence. Maybe the Capitol even built the arena near District Twelve. However, the Capitol darkened the windows as we were flown there specifically so we wouldn’t have any clues until the platforms pushed us to the top of the tubes. Katniss would know what she was doing here, but she had that sister and she was going to have a child. I was especially grateful for their sake as well as Peeta’s that she wasn’t here. Gale would have had similar experience, if he hadn’t been executed for acquiring it.

 

With further rage on their behalf, I charged towards the pile of supplies, closer to the center than Haymitch would have liked. It paid off as I grabbed a huge red backpack. I had to elbow and shoulder-slam the District Six boy to get him to release his grip on it. Cato made him a target in training for not much reason, and I had just turned him into an enemy for very good reason. He grabbed something from the periphery as he retreated.

 

I didn’t see Delly, so she must be on the other side of the circle. I did see blood that was far too much for a butcher, let alone a baker. Several children were cut or stabbed by other children in a matter of minutes. My stomach heaved, and I regurgitated the rich Capitol breakfast onto the grassy ground of the arena. That was the last thing I needed. Food was precious in the arena, and most of the tributes had stuffed themselves with Capitol food in the few days since the Reaping. Besides, the scene did not help me make a good impression. My strength did not necessarily make me skilled at other physical activity, but being healthy helped make me a decent runner, which I desperately needed to be right now. With the vile taste of vomit in my mouth, I hoisted the pack onto my shoulders and ran.

 

Delly had fled the Cornucopia entirely; part of our plan had been for me to share my supplies with her. However, it was not to be. Claudia had searched the Cornucopia particularly thoroughly on her fellow Careers’ behalf. She emerged wielding a wicked knife, only to throw it at Delly. As Delly fell from being shot in the back, my response almost felt instinctual. I folded my left thumb and pinky in on each other, kissed the middle three fingertips, and raised the hand to the sky. It was an ancient gesture of respect in District Twelve, often used for this kind of final goodbye. The whole district would be touched, but especially her brother James, cousin Bridget, father John, aunt Angela, grandfather George. The other deaths had received no such public acknowledgement.

 

I counted thirteen cannons, children killed in an hour’s time, and all I could think about was not being one of the next ten. I ran toward some fields at the bottom of a hill, but saw a Career chasing me with a bloody spear. I was resolved that my blood would not be added to the spearhead. I turned around and tripped the girl, pinning her. She hadn’t fallen on the blade itself since she held it away from her body in case of such a fall. However, her body trapped the spear itself, so I couldn’t grab her own weapon to kill her. I found a small knife in a leather pouch in one of my pack’s front outer pockets, flicked open the blade, and drove it into her neck.

 

Well, it was a wheat field at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t have yeast or much else, but I could still do something with this. I walked through the field with knife drawn, and heard someone else rustling. Thresh walked towards me with a blade of his own. He lowered it and said “Oh, Twelve, I thought you were Two. I can work with you.” And so the farmer and the baker subsisted on simple bread while laying in wait.

 

Thankfully, nothing more happened the first day, only a nighttime reminder of that morning’s slaughter. I had participated in it, hanging my head in shame at _District Four, Pearl_. Her district partner had also died in the opening chaos, the only other Career. I had also lost someone, crying a bit at _District Twelve, Delly_. “That’s because of your district partner, isn’t it?” Thresh realized. “Sweet girl, Rue liked her. That little flower better win if one of us two doesn’t.”

“Everybody liked Delly, including my little brother,” I pointed out.

“I got a sister, but she’s as big as I am,” Thresh replied. “Our grandma raised us.” I figured what happened to the parents was an unpleasant truth the Capitol didn’t want the audience to know about, and Thresh realized that. Turns out he wasn’t very talkative in general.

 

There were no deaths the second or third day, but the Capitol bloodlust was slaked again on the fourth day. Somebody got the boy from Eight. The fifth day was also silent.

 

I woke up with a feeling that the sixth day was going to be anything but. I was right, hearing a cannon go off as I was finishing my simple flatbread breakfast. “One and Two, Rue and the boys from Six and Seven were the only others left – who didn’t make the final eight?” Thresh wondered.

 

Then it hit me that I really had a chance to win this thing. This was the first time I remember someone from District Twelve making it into the final eight. I could visualize the Capitol interviewing the boys and the old man back home, as I’d seen happen in other districts countless times.

 

Another cannon sounded, and again we had no clue whose death it heralded. We were about to be very informed, however. I saw a group of tributes approaching our valley. I tapped Thresh’s thick shoulder and pointed out “Career alert!”

Glimmer was first into the field. Thresh showed no mercy, stepping out of the grass to choke her to death, a quick task for a big man against a woman of average build. She bared a machete, but Thresh kicked it away and it got lost amongst the tall plants.

“She’s there!” I heard Cato call out, pointing in another direction, towards Rue. The little girl aid in her interviews that she couldn’t be caught, and the way she was moving, she had a point. However, Claudia could shoot, and the sight of another knife in a back sent Thresh flying out of the field in a rage. Claudia went off to examine body and retrieve her blade, leaving Cato in the way and a more convenient target. Thresh nearly caught Cato off-guard and disarmed him, but not quite. Cato brutally swung his big blade down, and Thresh’s big knife wasn’t nearly enough to parry it. My ally quickly died a gruesome death.

 

However, Thresh had distracted Cato and Claudia from my presence, and I gladly took the opportunity to remain in hiding. There was no more bloodshed that day, and the evening’s gruesome news pointed out the boys from Six and Seven as the day’s early deaths. Cato must have avenged himself on ‘Ashton Moio’ for the imagined slight in training. This left me here alone with Marvel, Claudia and Cato.

 

Two more days brought no more cannons. I was surprised by the next one, since they hadn’t found me yet and I thought the remaining three were still allies. It turns out Marvel was on the receiving end of the career pack disintegrating. Two days after that, Cato and Claudia came back for me. She couldn’t shoot through the dense thicket, so I was able to catch her off-guard as Thresh had with Glimmer.

 

Cato made camp at the top of the hill, the two of us waiting for the other to move. _You didn’t puke the last few times. Only one more._ I had captured Claudia’s knives, but it was hard to throw them upwards, and at any angle, it was hard to figure out the weapon by instinct instead of years of training.

 

            Cato finally charged, and when he closed the distance, he pulled a knife from a scabbard in his belt. I suppose that was actually easier to work with in close quarters than his big sword. I grabbed his right wrist and tried to push the blade away, but his strength proved too much even for me and I felt the steel trace a line of blood across my throat.

 

(Phillip Mellark)

 

            Could the Capitol be any crueler? I say that not only because it was my own child dead this time, but because District Twelve’s hope was teased even worse than usual before one of the usual suspects crushed it. Ingrid had started to get close to the boys, sons she hadn’t had, like Katniss and Prim as daughters I hadn’t had. This reopened scars from Maysilee Donner’s death, Ingrid’s old friend who was killed by the arena twenty-four years prior. Even she couldn’t heal wounds like that.

 

            People took me for a gentle man, and that was mostly true, but there were a select few things that sent me into a rage, and this was apparently one of them. Yet Thread would show what happened to people who dared speak the truth. He had already executed one of the district’s firebrands; the relatively calmer folk like me were even more likely to see the sense in submission.

 

            Pan had taken Pumpernickel’s death hard, and apparently had taken something else hard as well. He wandered around town in the evening and stumbled back home in the morning only to say “The Castle twins.” I did not need to speculate as to how Raven and Robin had comforted him. Pan was hardly the first young man from town to sleep with one or both of them. And so love was a way to cope with pain; I was surrounded by people who knew that all too well.


	4. Phoenix

(Pan Mellark)

 

            In these two short months, Ingrid Everdeen already felt like more of a mother to me than my birth mother ever had. “Momma,” I said. “Our little family’s going to get bigger.”

            In walks Peeta, with his hand around Katniss’ waist. “So you got Raven or Robin knocked up?”

            “Not exactly,” I admitted.

            “Both of them?” Mom guessed. Correctly.

            “Yes.”

            “Women who live together tend to be fertile around the same time,” she explained in a teacher’s tone. _“Or not fertile, and you gotta watch out for that too!” Pumpernickel may have joked._

            “Congratulations on the sort-of-twins with the twins,” Peeta offered. “But one singing angel is enough for me,” he said while turning back to Katniss.

            Mom cast an obscene gesture at the back of a Peacekeeper standing on the street outside our window. “Ever since _certain people_ cut off the woods, I’ve been running low on birth control herbs, and those Castle girls were some of my best customers. Well, at the rate they were going, they were bound to end up with kids eventually, and now those kids will have an awesome dad.”

            “Thank you. They will,” I answered.

 

            “Go and make love to them again,” Peeta suggested. “Since they’re already pregnant, they can’t get pregnant again,” he pointed out.

            “It seems you are very familiar with that concept,” I observed, pointing to the arms wrapped around Katniss.

            “I learned it the _hard_ way, alright,” Katniss joked. We deserved some happiness amidst the chaos and insanity, I thought, and they’d found it in each other’s hearts and other body parts. I didn’t want to think about my father like that, but it was working that way for him too.

 

            With Pumpernickel soon to be buried, I needed another painkiller, and nothing quite compared to those beautiful, lusty young women. When I walked into their house, their father Russel glared at me a bit. He probably realized the same logic Peeta did, and I told him “Unfortunately, I can’t marry both your lovely daughters or choose between them”. Their mother Ruth was excited about grandchildren, and happy to see the young man responsible for them. Their brothers Razorbill and Roadrunner, both older and not twins, were nowhere to be seen. They weren’t as close as their sisters, so they might or might not be out together.

 

            Raven greeted me first by their bedroom door, and said “Back for more, you stud?” She was the older one by a few minutes, slightly shorter, and also had some nice freckles. She would have been a bit chubbier too if the District Twelve diet had allowed it. I could see that in her frame, which I enjoyed studying rather closely.

            I felt myself getting a bit chubbier in a way, and answered “More of you two pretty girls? Of course.” They began to compete at pulling my clothes off, a game everybody wins. When Robin slid out of her dress, I pushed her panties to the side and intended to fuck her while were both standing in the middle of the room, but she had an even better idea. She nudged me in the direction of the bed, and I made a point of dramatically falling down on the mattress. She pushed her own panties back to the side to start riding me. While Raven just lifted her skirt and lowered her crotch into my face. My tongue knew what to do as well as my cock, even though I hadn’t fucked both of them at the same time before. Last time, I took turns climbing on top of each of them while the other touched herself and loudly talked about how good my muscles looked glistening with sweat.

            I got to look at Raven’s pretty little ass and short blonde hair while she faced her sister. Despite being born together, they were no more related than any other siblings, same as me and Pump. Even sharing a womb didn’t usually make people this close, although I bet Pump would have liked to join in this delicious little pile of flesh.

Soon enough, I gave Robin’s muffin a cream topping. _Or in this position, was it greasing the baking pan?_ I had tasted Raven and she now tasted me, baking my loaf in her other oven while Robin blotted away some of the grease from the first batch. When Raven got my crust hard once more, I fucked both of them again.

 

            As I sat naked next to my just-as-unclothed girlfriends, I asked “Have you beautiful ladies thought of any baby names?”

            “Just something not starting with ‘R’,” Raven answered and Robin laughed.

            “‘Pumpernickel’ and ‘Delly’ don’t,” I said, downcast. “I was thinking of ‘Rue’ if there was another girl, but that’s apparently out of the question.”

            “I’m glad Pan knows his alphabet,” Robin joked. “I’m guessing you were thinking of ‘Thresh’ for a second boy.”

            “I was,” I said, pleased with her incisiveness. “Tributes fallen on the arena battlefields. Thread’s goons couldn’t blame us for sympathizing with traitors.”

 

            Delly died eighteen days ago, but they were only burying her now, to go along with Pumpernickel. The Capitol held off the funerals until both a district’s tributes were dead. Supposedly, the remaining one might become a Victor who’d want to attend the funeral, but really, I think those cheap lazy bastards only wanted to run one train.

 

            There were a whole bunch of Peacekeepers around. To make sure the funeral didn’t become a protest against the cause of death. Yet that hadn’t happened in all the years I remembered, and we wouldn’t dare do it now either, as much as we may want to. Part of this was being very careful with choice of words during the eulogies.

 

“Pumpernickel fought valiantly, nobly and honorably, I’ll try to remember that about my little brother, not that he died,” I said. Many older twins teased the younger one for a few minutes’ difference, I saw that with Raven and Robin sometimes. Ironically, Pumpernickel had been a bit taller than me, although I wasn’t as short as Peeta or our father. Pumpernickel hadn’t acted as much like Peeta or our father, but we still hated to see him gone, of course.

 

“Delly was the kind of positive-hearted girl this world needs more of, not less of, yet the odds weren’t in her favor,” her aunt Angela said. The two were buried next to each other at one end of the field, in simple pine boxes and with similarly plain wooden markers stuck into the fresh dirt. We almost always had two to lay to rest. I walked across the field to see one year with one and another year with three, yet I lacked for details. Most of the markers had become unintelligible over the decades – the ink had faded and the cuts in the wood which had once held that color were getting worn. A Lily had won before being put here, that seemed like a better potential name for my potential second daughter than most of the other fallen.

 

I saw someone I knew in Delly’s part of the crowd. Delly’s cousin Bridget was resting her face on Roadrunner Castle’s shoulder, tears added to the sweat that we all seemed drenched with in this summer weather. I overheard them speaking. “Bridge, your cousin was such a sweet girl, all of us in town knew her in some way and we all liked her,” Roadrunner said.

She answered with “I know you’ve spent a lot of time at the Cartwrights pretending to look for shoes but really looking for me. Thank you burning bright amongst these cold cinders”.


	5. Phoenix Part II

(Angela Cartwright)

 

            Hah! Wait until my daughter gets a load of this! I’m about to get a load from her boyfriend’s brother! There was plenty of Castle man to go around, it seems. I had long since fantasized about fucking a man as young as I was during my glory days knowing what I know now. And one of the things I knew was to not rush to marriage again. Just a good fuck may be just fine. “We’re in the construction business, but right now, I’d rather be involved in some cunt destruction,” he said sharply while grabbing one of my breasts through the blouse. A good hard fuck, it seemed.

 

            I wouldn’t be surprised that he learned some things from his sisters’ parade of boyfriends. Amongst other things, Mr. and Mrs. Castle were used to their children’s significant others coming and going. They probably didn’t dwell on it, but at least they tolerated it from all their children instead of praising their sons and chastising their daughters. Mrs. Castle was excited about grandchildren. I was surprised that she was only just now starting to get them. I’m only in my late 30’s, so I had plenty of time left for more kids if that’s what the odds favored.

 

            “Angie, you’re proof that women are like fine wine, getting better as they age!” he practically yelled at me as we stumbled up to his bedroom.

            “What would we know about fine wine, Razor? That certainly wasn’t no fine wine we stole from Haymitch!” We had split the small glass bottle of that clear firewater; I don’t know where he got it from, but I did know that it made us feel awful good after we got past the awful taste. Haymitch had finished several bottles by himself, pissed off about losing another two tributes, one of them my sweet little niece this time.

            “Good point. But I do know that this Razor wants to cut your clothes off!” he shouted back as he did pretty much that. A few blouse buttons popped and I felt my bra hooks dig at my back as he yanked at my tits from the front. _Hell, most men couldn’t figure those out even when sober._

            He popped out one of my tits and began sucking on it just as ferociously as he’d exposed it. _He was welcome to leave this kind of mark on me this way_ , I thought of the bite marks that were likely developing around my nipple. “Lower! Lower!” was all I could answer with. He yanked at my pants just as ferociously as my shirt, but with nothing in the way of his hungry mouth this time. “It’s all-you-can-eat,” I said, rapidly becoming even further out of breath.

            He soon lifted his wet mouth to say “I’m full and you’re about to be!” He pulled the tangled bundle of cloth the rest of the way off my legs and lifted my ankles onto his shoulders before ravishing me. Every powerful thrust was not only electric in and of itself, but a pleasant reminder of how desired I was for the first time in well over a decade. He filled me, that’s for sure; I looked up to see his seed dripping out of me.

 

            He put my legs down and I slid all the way back onto the bed. He jumped onto the bed and my breasts jiggled as the vibration traveled through the mattress. He wrapped his strong sexy arms around my chest, probably to feel my breasts again. I didn’t mind at all, his spirit even more supportive than his hands. The next thing I knew, I saw morning light coming through the window. I had spent the whole night naked atop the young man’s bed, with his equally naked body pressed against my back. I didn’t regret the deliciously sloppy sex, no not at all.

 

            However, the alcohol was coming back to haunt me. Almost as if on cue, Razorbill grasped his forehead too. He gazed at me while carrying out some semblance of getting dressed. “I’ll bring back some cold water for the angel who landed on my bed last night.”

            “It’s Angel _a_. I was no angel last night, I remember that much,” I laughed.

            “But you look like one now with your blonde halo,” he countered. _So rough and so gentle, he might just be a keeper._

I heard additional footsteps as he squeezed through the door he barely opened. “Seems Roadrunner’s brother had a hot date last night too”. _I’d recognize my Bridget’s voice anywhere._

“You know her well,” Razorbill said, barely able to contain laughter.

“Hi dear!” I called out through the door. Everybody fell silent for a moment.

“Uh, I’m happy for you?” Bridget stammered.

“Seems you were onto something with this whole idea of fucking Castle men!” I declared with a wink my daughter fortunately couldn’t see.

 

(Cato Adams)

 

            The ash from the arena forest fire had long since been washed off of me, but the glorious memory would always be with me. The conflagration had taken place during the ninth day in the arena, as the Career alliance was disintegrating. Claudia and I had chased Marvel into the woods, and the fire chased him back out. He was running towards a stream to extinguish his burning clothes, and didn’t notice my javelin until it was too late. Who’d have thought that the District Twelve boy would die harder than the District One boy?

 

            Glimmer had been a hot piece of ass who could fight, although not well enough, unlike her heroine Sapphire from a few years ago. I was one of the few guys who watched Sapph’s bladework as closely as her breasts. I fought with a sword to honor my father who had died with one in his hand, as part of my mission to do what he couldn’t. I put in long hours in the caves with the old tough guys, but the footage of the 71st Games had been far more entertaining for the same training purposes. I had to challenge my fellow victor to a duel; we both had ferocious hacking styles and it would be a sight to see. Maybe Atala would let us put on a demonstration in the Training Center.

 

            Clove was no Glimmer or Sapphire, yet I didn’t care as I was quickly falling more and more in love with the pint-size prodigy. Glimmer had been a few inches taller than Miss Hawkins and Sapphire was a few inches taller than _me_. Clove was at the front of the crowd when I made the glorious return home I had always dreamed of. Yet I had never expected someone like her. I had jumped off the platform to pick her up at the waist and lift her to my mouth, where I got my first taste of her tongue. Flavia Hawkins was happy for her older sister. The jealousy on many other faces was obvious even at such a happy time.

 

Even the youngest had remembered the celebration of Maria’s victory last year; I recalled the homecomings of Enobaria and Rubeus as well. Some people had been there for all fourteen of our victories, going all the way back to Victor Julianus in the 5th Games, the first ever Career district victor. The old man was even there leaning on his cane to welcome the latest victor not named Victor. It was hardly unprecedented for the same district to win two years in a row; before Maria and me, Lyme and Brutus had done it for us about over three decades ago, and Gloss and Cashmere had done it for District One just eleven and ten years ago. However, three in a row had never been done before, and I was confident the odds were in Patrick Lazare II’s favor. District Two had never really fallen; we were just rising yet further.


	6. Phoenix Part III

(Katniss Everdeen)

           

            I emptied another meager breakfast into the dirt of District Twelve. Such was the price of my life, the vicissitudes of creating a new life. Pregnant women often got sick like this; even I knew that much. However, it was a price I never thought I’d pay for whatever reason, let alone to save myself from execution. Perhaps sparing pregnant women a firing squad was a small bit of genuine mercy amongst the lies while we’re at their mercy, I thought. Gale may well be dead, but his spirit is still in me as well as his child.

 

            The breakfasts and other meals weren’t so meager since I had fallen into Peeta Mellark’s arms. With Gale gone and the woods closed off, I honestly didn’t know how Prim, Mother and I would have made it otherwise. Even I didn’t think he was just bribing me to fall for him. The sensitive little boy had finally found himself man enough to take care of the woman he insisted he loved. A similar flash of genius four and a half years ago left me even able to stand here and think about it.

 

            Insist about his feelings he did, and rather endearingly – even more so since I never thought myself susceptible to such things. “Just think, in seven months, we’ll add to our big family of sorts,” he said. _This part can’t be over soon enough, but what guy could understand, when I can barely understand it myself?_

 

I was fairly clear that even though it wasn’t Peeta’s child, he’d hold it as if it was, if only because it was dear Katniss’ baby. I hoped they grew as close as I had with my father. If it was a boy, it would almost certainly be another Jacob. For someone who had thought against children, let alone names for them, I came up with that very quickly.

 

I certainly couldn’t much make it another Gale. I didn’t want to know what Thread and his goons would do to me for such overt sympathy for a known traitor. Life in District Twelve these days provided plenty of examples of the depths our new Head Peacekeeper could sink to, but I didn’t want to dwell on that with the bright spots the Mellarks were in our lives.

 

Jacob Andrew Everdeen, and Thomas Hawthorne for that matter, were killed in an unfortunate mine explosion, that cause of death being a fact of life here. At least officially. Gale had insisted that the incident which killed our fathers was a setup to eliminate troublemakers and make it look like an accident. He had been the victim of a much more direct approach. He had wanted children, but the crushing poverty and threat of the Games here in our little corner of Panem made a world he didn’t want to bring them into. Now that he had a child coming, he wouldn’t have the chance to be a father like his father.

 

Peeta had a girlfriend with a step-child on the way. Maybe he’d even have a wife of me. I would have called myself crazy a couple months ago for thinking of the word in relation to myself, but now it could very well be a couple years in my future. Many young lovers married right after they survived their last reaping, even though it was legal slightly before that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Prim and Rory followed four years after me and Peeta. I was making up for lost time; my sister was getting off to an early and quick start.

 

There was a big ‘if’, though – the lovebirds would both need to make it through all seven reapings. I didn’t need to take tesserae anymore and Prim never would. I suppose that was one of the advantages of having a baker in love with you; even the worst of the stuff the Capitol issued them was better than what one got with tesserae. However, the slips remained in from my last five years of acquiring meager rations that way, and the odds could be not in your favor with even one or a few slips. The reaping ball could pass me by. If it sent me into the arena, would I survive long enough to do much of anything, let alone walk back home to the Justice Building? I could use a bow, but the Careers could use who knows what weapons? I could hunt, but the Cornucopia and sponsors would provide those inner-district volunteers with more than enough food. Pumpernickel Mellark had learned the hard way how difficult it was to match them.

 

When Peeta talked about his new family, he meant even more than his dream girl and her child. He finally had a real mother figure in my mother. As if on cue, I saw her kiss Peeta’s father. I still remembered the spark in my mother’s voice when with my father. I didn’t see it now, but what I saw was close, and anything would have been a massive improvement over her dead to the world with my father literally dead.

 

Peeta had an arm around my belly. A more aggressive guy would have that limb around my breasts or my waist. Gale had done so in our little time as lovers, however furtively we had to do the deed. Peeta and I, though, we had plenty of time and cover, at least for now. “I hope having a family with you is everything I’ve wished it would be, because making love to you is surely everything I’ve dreamed.” It seemed those dreams were rather imaginative.

 

            He just wanted to dance – naked. Even I could figure out this meant sticking it in me while we were standing up, but a few minutes of genuine twirling and footwork made it even more enjoyable when he actually did. I was buzzing with how much I had actually anticipated him, wanted him. He slid out, although I hadn’t felt him finish. When he knelt down to kiss my lady parts, I was finished, alright. He stood up to go back in me, but I had a better idea. It was my turn to kneel; I finished him with my mouth instead of starting him with it. “Oh, Katniss!” he shouted as he threw his head back. “Maybe love suits you better than you thought!” _I had avoided love because my mother showed what it was like to lose it, but maybe I should have focused on how great it was while you had it. I saw it coming back to Mother and I felt it myself for the first time._ His seed had a sharp flavor, but I had eaten worse, and would be eating much worse, if anything at all, if it wasn’t for my bread boy.

 

            I was saved from tesserae, but I still sometimes had other business at the Justice Building. I saw Rory in line for those meager rations – would’ve broken Gale’s heart and caused him to break other things, but it had to be done. The Mellarks were what passed for the well-to-do of District Twelve, and they had a hard enough time taking care of the three Everdeens along with themselves.

 

            A beautiful fall day was ruined by the dreaded sirens at the mines. It was not quite four years and nine months after my father was killed; it had happened a few times since then, and today was one of those days. As usual, much of the district rushed to the entrances to see who made it back up the elevators – and who didn’t.

 

My mother and sister were amongst the few non-official pale Town faces there – this is what their skill in treating burns was for. Her family had the medicines, but didn’t care to expend them on the Seam rats who couldn’t pay for them anyway. Thread wanted to leave them to Capitol doctors who my mother said were doing half-assed work. Some miners who were supposedly taken home to die were actually brought to our part of town to be patched up. As it was, my family left a few alive with scars or missing limbs instead of gone forever.

 

            The winter hit early and hard. And this was coming from someone who now lived in one of the relatively sturdy Merchant Section houses! This particular one needed ovens blasting to serve its purpose, and sleeping behind the kitchen cuddled next to Peeta cut the chill like nothing else.  I wasn’t sure which did the trick, but with my teeth not chattering for once, I wasn’t complaining. The boys found it in them to bake around the clock except when the ovens needed to be turned off for cleaning, so the furnaces could be run as often as possible.

 

            Some people came to my mother with winter ailments. We often weren’t quite alone behind the kitchen, with a few of the worst hypothermia cases thawing out in there. The Capitol relied on social disfavor to keep Town away from Seam, with our looks to mark the differences real and imagined. They brushed off a few exceptions like us with the expectation that it be kept down to a few exceptions. Thread and his goons brutally enforced what Capitol law was, but the one thing I credited them for was not going even farther than that rich city dictated.

 

            It darn near broke my heart to see Posy amongst the freezing, even after all I’d been through. “C-c-can’t wait to b-b-be Auntie Posy” she stuttered through shivers while pointing at my belly. The adults and the older kids knew it was going to grow, but it was a surprise to little Posy until she actually saw it happening.

 

            “Hell of a birthday,” Hazelle muttered when about to take her baby back home. Posy had barely beat the measles when she was younger. Hazelle was downright angry about the district’s run-down conditions putting her through that again, as well she should be. I suppose Capitol clothes could be warm as well as ridiculous. Capitol buildings would be sturdy enough to not let in the heat and more than the bakers had furnaces. Everyone needed to eat, so I suppose even the Capitol had bakeries. They almost certainly had Avoxes doing the worst of the work, though. Losing their tongues and enslaved as punishment for some crime or another, the Capitol cruelly multitasked there. I’m almost certain that’s where our district’s few remaining overt criminals were shipped off to.

 

            “Happy birthday,” Peeta told Posy, giving her small round tan cookies with pink frosting puffs on top of them.

            “Food in my favorite color,” she said in awe. I knew better than anyone how a few assarions’ worth of food could make a huge difference in a starving person’s life.

 

            Even the Peacekeeper uniform and barracks would have been an improvement in this weather, but few in the district dared consider joining the scum who put us in that situation, which would have helped the Capitol oppress the people who remained. Some of our Hob friends had explained that their working inside the system was an exception, that they beat it out of most recruits. The Castle twins’ older brothers had thought about becoming _military_ construction workers, but the ban of spouse or children would have been too much of a problem for them. One of them had already started. Mayor Larkin’s ex-wife, now dating the older one Razorbill, would give birth only a couple months after I would.

 

            Soon enough, it was time for a Victory Tour, almost always starting in District Twelve, rarely ever having a reason to end there. Most Peacekeepers came from District Two, I knew that much, so it wasn’t surprising for them to a bit more enthusiastic for one of their own. However, I saw one of Thread’s officers especially happy to see Cato. “You lucky bastard,” I overheard. “Behave, so the odds remain ever in your favor.”

 

            Thread was much stricter than Cray about most everything, including making us pretend to be enthusiastic about this. Cato felt no need to cast smiles at the girls here, considering the feisty little lady he knew back home, and I had a feeling she was glad of that. However, he was a appealing guest nevertheless. “I have a new respect for the districts out here seeing how well they could fight. I mean it when I say my victory was no sure thing,” he said. _It was ironic that the arena, the centerpiece of Capitol oppression partially because it set the districts against each other, was the only thing that brought the districts together at all._

 

            The Victory Tour stop was one of the few days when all of District Twelve ate well. Even so, the meal was scraps, relatively speaking. The Mellarks put some of their stale bread to use in toast form. Rooba, the town butcher, stewed up some tough cuts. I knew her well, as she had often give me and Gale a fair price on large game. She had escaped Thread’s purge of the Hob crowd, for she only had Capitol meat when the new Peacekeepers came calling.

 

Cato’s stylist had given him something warm. We didn’t have such a service available. No sooner did we retreat to the Mellark bakery kitchen that we got a knock on the door. It was a Peacekeeper, though if he was about to haul us away, he would have been much ruder about barging in. Judging by the single bronze bar on each sleeve, he was a minor officer, perhaps the same one who had enthusiastically greeted the new Victor at the train station.

“I understand this is the former residence of fallen tribute Pumpernickel Mellark,” he said officiously.

“It is,” Mr. Mellark admitted sadly.

“The victor asked me to send this along to his family.” The Peacekeeper produced what was obviously a money bag, opened to reveal one hundred shiny silver pieces with the District Two seal. “His words,” the Peacekeeper added, with a note. _I won this partially at his expense, so I figured he should get part of it. I can’t buy him back, but I figured you’d need this now if ever._ If the fallen tribute had come from the Seam, that would have been even more true, I mused. Well, it was more than I expected from a Career tribute, or from one of the new Peacekeepers. We’d never get the Hob atmosphere back, but this guy wasn’t so bad.  
  


Thread didn’t let up on anything, including the Victory Tour after it left District Twelve. Cray had half-assed managing the District Twelve stop, let alone the rest of the thing. So we’d have a different indignity to muddle through for a couple weeks.


	7. Dominance And Submission

(Coriolanus Snow)

 

            Cato Adams was almost my ideal Victor. He gladly volunteered and smiled as he stood atop the bodies, enjoying every minute of the honor and glory my propaganda told the country it was.

 

He wasn’t perfect, though, making clear he wasn’t single as he aggressively kissed his girlfriend on returning home. It was one of my many dirty secrets that I forced attractive Victors to prostitute themselves to Capitol citizens. I could’ve gotten plenty of money and curried plenty of political favor by using him. After all, even the Victors, the mightiest of the districts’ population, were just resources to be used by the Capitol.

 

I was an expert at having people killed and making it look like an accident, tell it to Haymitch Abernathy or Johanna Mason, but I couldn’t much disappear Clove Hawkins. The whole Hawkins family played by my rules. Clove and her younger sister Flavia both trained to become Victors. Their older brother Alexander was a Peacekeeper, like their father before them and probably going back further. There was a tradition of service with Cato’s ancestors as well.

 

I knew that law enforcement depended on people volunteering to provide the force. I didn’t want rebellious or just plain disinterested conscripts inside the system; the cadre of loyalists would have had to control them as well as the civilians. Fortunately for me and the other Capitol elite, the District Two propaganda machine kept running smoothly.

 

Cato played by my rules, too, even though his father died in the arena. Maybe even because of that – he seemed like one of those boys who tried to outdo the old man. I would know. My father had been a minor political functionary before he was murdered by rebel assassins during the Dark Days. I learned that when I was older, and was determined to rise higher than he had. On the way up and once I got there, I was resolved to suppress rebellion even more thoroughly. I was living my dream, and his and everyone else’s seemed petty by comparison.

 

I checked Peacekeeper personnel records – Clove’s brother Alexander was a field officer, the Lieutenant in charge of 1st Platoon, 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 12th Peacekeepers.

 

For years, I had been concerned about the relative lack of criminal activity reported from District Twelve. However much my forces kept the population down, there were always isolated incidents of desperate people rising up. It showed a lack of internal discipline to do what they weren’t supposed to, and my forces were glad to apply external discipline.

 

I worried that District Twelve appearing calm was a sign that its lawbreaking was being ignored. I was right. Two men were ringleaders of the poachers, trespassers, traitors and even I lost track of what else. Of course, they were coal miners, like anyone else in District Twelve poor enough to consider such foolishness. I had some especially trustworthy Peacekeepers rig a mine explosion to kill the pair of scumballs.

 

I figured it would break the resistance to eliminate its two figureheads. To do it quietly meant that I wouldn’t have to divert forces from traitors elsewhere. Eleven was always particularly unruly, and it produced most of the food the nation depended on. Twelve just produced some coal for heating, the coke ovens at the steel mills out west, and some of the District Five powerplants.

 

To subtly execute those District Twelve traitors would also avoid riling up that district’s surviving malcontents. To quell a riot would have been even more trouble than to reinforce the District Twelve Peacekeepers as a preemptive threat. I figured the families of those miners would have been the most trouble, having been poisoned by their relatives’ rebellious propaganda. Perhaps this move would nip that in the bud.

 

I installed a new Head who was supposed to take a firm hand if the situation spiraled back out of control. Yet in another few years, I was getting worried again about the lack of reported activity. I knew I’d need to lay the heavy hand at some point soon. I debated whether to fix this problem before the 74th Games or after. If I waited, perhaps a victory would have mollified them or other problematic districts, and it would have given me more time to plan to action in general. If I struck as soon as possible, I wouldn’t have to worry about the Games going bad for them and fanning the flames of discontent.

 

Whenever it happened, the fiercely loyal and extremely ambitious Romulus Thread would be the man for the job. He wanted to prove his devotion despite coming from the nondescript District Eight, and that he had. Many of the few other outer-district recruits muddled through their service for a lack of other options.

 

One of my intelligence agents reported the District Twelve mayor himself buying produce stolen from the Capitol’s woods. I raged at the mayor being part of the problem too, as opposed to a good mayor failing to work with a recalcitrant Head Peacekeeper. I had snapped an order to prepare my flight to District Eight. That was all my personal assistant needed to know; I had General Travers make the military logistics arrangements to actually move the reinforcements into position.

 

My promptness was a smashing success. The newly promoted Colonel Thread caught the son of one of the fallen miners and the daughter of another poaching together. They would have been executed together, but the boy had managed to get the girl pregnant. I had long since supported a moratorium on execution for pregnant women. For some reason, the death of a fetus inflamed the population more than the death of an already-born criminal. Hopefully, the close call would intimidate the mother and contribute to the loyalty of the child. The nation’s population crisis didn’t need it anyway.

 

District Twelve nearly won the 74th Games, and Thread’s implements of destruction kept the grumbling under control, whereas some of the fraternizing Peacekeepers might have joined in the complaining. Thread had executed Cray right away, and weeded out some of the other mutineers even before the Games, cowing the others.

 

District Eleven was, all things considered, a success for Capitol law enforcement, but I had needed to talk to General Claudius Domitian about his sky-high expenses for whips. I ascertained that was truly necessary to punish criminals, warn them not to do it again and warn their fellow workers not to do it in the first place, so I gladly disbursed the funds.

 

If more than the bare minimum was being spent in the districts, that meant less for Capitol luxury. We deserved the best as the fruits of victory, and it kept Capitol citizens pacified with distraction instead of force.

 

I had worried the 11th Peacekeepers may have been using those whips for some sort of sexual depravity. I had no problem whatsoever with sexual depravity, although my personal hot-blooded days were long gone.

 

However, any sort of sexual contact was banned in the corps. With it came all sorts of problems, which I supported trying to eliminate instead of trying to manage. There was the worry that such personnel would be loyal to lovers or children instead of the country.  It would have spoken to a lack of discipline. Since time immemorial, prostitutes and the freely promiscuous contributed mightily to soldiers’ morale. However, with that came sexually transmitted diseases, and with female soldiers, pregnancies. Soldiers’ sex lives could simply distract them, and it could further inflame a civilian population; both of those factors had been problems with the late Walter Cray.

 

All these thoughts of internal enemies reminded me that Panem had one external enemy. District Thirteen had been a major fortress for the Capitol, with weapons up to and including nuclear missiles. The district had broken away from the Capitol during the Dark Days when rebels stole its weapons, leading to a stalemate that leaders on neither side could break. We had replaced it with a facility out west in the mountains of District Two, but I still dreamed of the Capitol marching back in to Thirteen. However, traitors in the districts the Capitol still controlled would be emboldened and empowered by Thirteen’s support, so I wanted to continue to keep the two groups separate.

 

My attention was brought back to the responsibility to host the Capitol stop on the Victory Tour. Cato Adams was here now, enjoying the festivities, the last step before making another glorious return home. My granddaughter was enjoying too much of the distilled portion of the festivities. “Unlucky for me that girl from home got to you first!” she shouted. She was likely going to get a night with Finnick Odair for her 18th birthday and had apparently gotten a slightly different idea last summer. Likewise, her mother, my daughter, had her _admirers_ since my son-in-law died of food poisoning after questioning my leadership abilities. Well, plenty of guys got prostitutes for their sons – I would know, having facilitated some of those arrangements, and this was really no different.

 

The Victory Tour concluded the cycle of rituals for a particular year’s Games, although those affected would be stuck with a lifetime of reminders. The whole country would be reminded not to rebel, the taking of tributes as a warning of the Capitol’s power and its willingness to use it.

 

The rituals for this year’s Games began earlier than usual. Every twenty-five years, there was a special twist in the rules. This kept the excitement of the Games and the warning to the viewers from getting stale. Even I didn’t know what the twist was going to be. The creators of the Games had written the rules on cards and sealed them in yellow envelopes. The small box containing these stacks of cards was one of the most secured documents of the Panem government; once retrieved by a multitude of high-ranking Peacekeepers, the President read that year’s card in a live television broadcast.

 

I had been President since just before the last time. That card reading had gone well, even though the ensuing Games hadn’t. Haymitch Abernathy dared insult the Games in his interview and won them with an unexpected trick. The Capitol was not to be outsmarted, so I made him pay dearly for that stunt.

 

The concept of the Quarter Quell was a wonderful part of my predecessors’ great work. The box was presented to me by a small boy, who I think was General Travers’ son Charles. I picked the third envelope from the first row and cracked it open to read aloud “To remind the districts of both the Capitol’s punishment and its mercy, if a tribute’s district partner dies they both die, but the final remaining district pair wins together.” I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

 

It could be good, to help ensure yet another victory for the loyal inner districts – one of the less enthusiastic outer districts would have to come up with two good tributes instead of just one. Maria had won the 73rd Games before Cato emerged as the Victor of the 74th, setting up the possibility of an unprecedented three victories in a row for the same district. Even more favoritism to the volunteer districts would increase the probability of this appealing storyline. Which inner district won wouldn’t make much difference in the outer districts.

 

Chrome Goldman of One had broken Lyme and Brutus’ streak in the 44th Games, only to see his son and daughter’s streak left unextended by Finnick in the 65th Games. Chrome’s other son, the daughter of a District Two victor, and the children of the District Two mayor were all amongst the potential volunteers this year. As Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane, going into his fourth year, put it, “This should be a very interesting mix.”

 

I had considered the possibility of looking at the card ahead of time and changing it. However, there were some things that even I hesitated to do. I hadn’t had a better idea, certainly not one good enough to merit the highly irregular procedure. Law was the main thing I had on my side, and even with repercussions highly unlikely, I skirted that very carefully.


	8. Summer Of 75

(Katniss Everdeen)

My mind was filling with dread as my belly was filling with a child. I continued to want Jacob as a boy’s name, but I still couldn’t decide on a girl’s name. I was sometimes congratulated on so pronounced a baby bump, and the soon-to-be grandmothers said this was fairly normal. I worried about the Games a bit more than usual, but even with me gone, the baby would be in good hands with them and its uncles and aunts.

 

Mother had been passing along her experience from being pregnant with me and later Prim – the good, bad and the ugly. Many people had avoided the Everdeens out of anger. In their eyes, it was a horrible thing for people from different parts of the district to love one another and it was even worse for them to create a new life together. Even my father caught some hard stares from his fellow Seam folks; they felt he had abandoned his own people by loving another. Yet in my parents’ eyes, it was nothing but beautiful and that’s what had kept them moving forward. Thinking about the relationship they once had inspired the one I currently had.

 

With the woods closed off, I sometimes found myself with less to do, even after helping at the bakery. I had sometimes consigned myself to listening to the girl talk at school. Ironically, I was one of the few Seam girls that hadn’t dreamed of having Gale’s babies, and now I was the one actually doing so. And very soon.

 

Madge was one of the people happy for the soon-to-be new mother, and I actually knew her instead of brushing off compliments from strangers. I had halfway ignored her in my struggle to survive, but I had a better friend than I had known. I was hopeless at playing the piano, but I learned much more than that. “Apparently you were just a late bloomer, but I’ve never been attracted to boys at all,” she said. “Even Gale didn’t tempt me. I figured you were like that too.”

“Like what?” I asked back. I honestly had no clue what she meant by ‘that’.

“Attracted to girls instead,” she smiled.

“I didn’t even know that was possible. Well, you’re still the same girl that’s always sat with me at school.”

 

One evening in March, soon after what would have been Gale’s 19th birthday, I was tossing and turning in my bed. Peeta, passing through the house on his way to his own, sensed how bitter I was. “Katniss? Don’t let the Capitol crush your spirit, your beautiful spirit,” he said in a sweet voice reserved for me and the few other people he loved.

Then he sat down on the bed and winked. He lifted the covers and peeled away my top, gazing longingly at my chest. “Your breasts look even prettier when they swell, someone’s gonna eat well for the next few months.” Apparently that someone was him right now. Not only were they bigger, they were also more sensitive, so I reacted instantly when he put his mouth to one of them. “I was experiencing hunger of a different kind. Since that felt good, imagine how good it will feel to have your baby there, only a few weeks now.”

“Can’t be soon enough! Oof, it’s kicking, feel that!” He gladly put his hands all over my belly to feel the vibrations himself. Once the little one went to sleep for the night, so did we. There was something about his tender but possessive touch that always comforted me when I needed and deserved it most; he senses those times and now was certainly one of them.

 

It wasn’t quite four weeks later, on April 1st after breakfast, when the new Everdeen decided to join us. I felt and heard a splash on the floor. Prim and Mother both turned to the sound. “Yeah, Little Duck, my water just broke!” I shouted back at them. The two of them hastily cleared off my bed to make the room simple but clean. I hobbled there after them.

 

Mother stressed the importance of cleanliness for anyone involved. At one point she shouted “Far too many women have gotten sick from dirty birthing rooms, and she will not be one of them!” She turned directly to me and said “I’m sorry dear, but since your woods have been cut off, I’ve run very low on painkiller herbs.”

“I’m the sorry one!” I shouted back. “Oww!” I moaned. I thought I was used to pain, but no, despite many friendly warnings from her and others.

“Push, dear, push,” she said as she squeezed my left hand and Little Duck held the right.

 

            Peeta had just come back from some morning deliveries. He immediately realized the reason for the commotion, and ran right back out to get the surviving Hawthornes. Hazelle, as a laundress, could easily put down her work and return to it later. Posy didn’t start school until the fall. Explanations could be made to Rory, Prim and Vick’s teacher. Mine foremen would not have taken excuses.

 

I had Mr. Mellark run across town to go get Madge – she was one of my few friends, after all. Also, she was going to bring a blank birth certificate and take a few pictures afterwards.

 

Prim and Mother were the only people in the room with me until Madge came running. She was carrying a wooden rack with a needle and six glass vials. Morphling was always precious, but right now the golden liquid was worth its weight in gold. “Thank you, Madge!” _agh!_ “Right now, please!” Mother broke the seal on one of the bottles and picked up the needle, drawing the vial’s contents into the chamber of the syringe. She found a vein in my arm and pushed down the plunger. The momentary stab turned my unpleasant mental and physical fog into a tolerable one.

 

I looked out to see the Hawthornes making their mad dash from the Seam. I heard Vick shout “Katniss about to pop!” _Well, he had a point._

 

Little Duck called out “We have a head!” I was seated somewhat upright in the bed, so I could see the baby just starting to come out of me with a thin coat of dark hair on its head. “What looks like a boy’s head,” she soon added. It seemed hours later and may well have been by the time my new son fully emerged from me. Mother used a pair of scissors sterilized in boiling water to snip the umbilical cord. It was a relief to hear him crying instead of me. It was magical when I took him into my arms and he stopped doing it.

 

“We can call the other folks in once we’ve cleaned up a bit of this mess,” Mother decreed. Mom and Little Duck took turns holding Jacob while the other worked, grandmother and aunt now, not just birth attendants. “Come on in!” she called to the friends and relatives waiting outside the room. This included Madge with her camera.

 

Peeta was the first to hold her after the three of us. “You’re so cute! Well, with Katniss as your mommy, of course you are!” Peeta and Mr. Mellark wer convincing cooing over the son and grandson not their own.

As Peeta held Jacob close, Posy looked up at them. Gale was the closest she once had to a father figure, and this child would never know its biological father either. “Wow, is not doll, is real baby!” she exclaimed. Mother had found a little chair elsewhere in the bakery’s living space and brought it nearby for the youngest previously-born person here. Posy sat in it before Peeta knelt down to lay the baby in Posy’s arms. “Auntie Posy loves you!” she said, again speaking enthusiastically.

“Aren’t they all just so precious?” Hazelle observed.

 

The birth certificate pointedly named Gale as the father. As we signed it along with Mother as the midwife, I thought _What are the goons in District Twelve’s new management going to think of this? Well, it’s the truth._

 

 “We all have to grow up too fast out here,” Mom told Peeta, “and we’ve long since known how well you rose to that challenge, but still – good man. A lot of sixteen year olds would stick someone else with their baby instead of claiming someone else’s baby.” Then she said something embarrassing but necessary. “You two are going to need to give that part of her body a rest for a few weeks.”

 

I needed all sorts of rest right now. There was a cradle next to my bed for baby Jacob, and we both went to sleep. Mother had warned me to savor the time the baby spent sleeping.

 

As I changed his cloths one day, I muttered “How does someone so little crap so much?”

Prim was nearby, and cheerfully answered “Because of how much he eats. He likes your breasts even more than Peeta does.” Both of them made it much more bearable to keep on living in the circumstances in which we found ourselves.

  
(Angela Cartwright)

 

            I’d become a new mother and a wife again during the summer of 75. In that order. Two decades ago, I learned my lesson about a pregnancy-prompted rush to the Justice Building, and I didn’t care to repeat that mistake. _Let’s see what kind of father the father of my child is before I marry him._ Razorbill knew how I felt about that, but we had been together for nearly a year anyway, so I knew he was going to ask soon.

 

            Ingrid Everdeen helped me deliver what turned out to be a big baby boy. She had done this many times before, but was especially familiar with midwifery lately. Her first grandchild on April 1st, Raven and Robin’s babies Pumpernickel II and Delly on May 18th; those names meant a lot to all of us. And now me with David.

 

            I didn’t expect Razorbill to propose as soon as our newborn was put into his arms. He knelt down cradling the baby and said “Will the beautiful mother of this child become my wife?” I was overcome with the tenderness of the moment, and couldn’t resist saying yes. I just hoped the appendage next to the pinky was the right finger to give a man this time.

            Roadrunner couldn’t resist following up, also picking this moment to say something we all knew was coming. “Will her even more lovely daughter become _my_ wife?”

            “So we’re becoming Mrs. Castle together,” Bridget answered.

 

            Ingrid clapped. Having been so happily married once, she knew how much it meant.

 

August 2nd would be a good time to actually head to the Justice Building. Many younger lovebirds married right after their last reaping, and many older couples joined what was by District Twelve standards an extravagant party. Bridget, not to mention Raven and Robin, had experienced that grim relief last near. Even with her cousin dying, we were glad it wasn’t her, another cold touch on our grim reality.

 

            At least Delly’s relatives had longer to absorb the final shock than did Pumpernickel’s relatives. _Priscilla Black, I would be a bit more distraught over my child’s death!_ During the middle of that August, I had figured my daughter was onto something with Roadrunner’s comforting touch. Smiling at his older brother, I wasn’t so lonely any more. I was quite glad to learn that Razorbill could fuck me better than I’d ever been fucked before, but I fell in love with how gently he had treated me the next morning.

 

The first bouts of morning sickness hadn’t surprised me in the least. Considering how often Razorbill made love to his Angel(a), it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. One time I simply looked up at him while he climbed on top of me, but the way he drank in my body with both eyes and hands had electrified me even before his penis made that straightforward entrance. Once I woke up to feel his tight chest press up against my back. A whispered yet giddy “Ah, my alarm cock is about to go off!” had been the cue for him to take my front from behind.

 

            For our impending wedding, Razorbill had paid Haymitch for liquor this time. He got out four glasses, rather than sloppily chugging and passing the bottle. The firewater was topped off with a sweet orange liquid, both to dilute the booze and mask the taste.

 

            Many couples who had married on a previous August 2nd went to congratulate the current year’s newlyweds. None were happier than Ruth and Russel Castle, who on their twenty-fifth anniversary would watch their sons take the same great step.

 

            “Treat her better than I did,” Fergus admitted. The crowd appreciated the boss’ self-deprecating humor.

            Razorbill answered this too with “I will” and the laughs picked up.

            “I admit I’m 36, but my lovebird makes me feel like an infatuated teenager again,” I said to the whole crowd. My daughter, herself still an actual teenager, knew full well how that worked with my both brother-in-law and son-in-law.


	9. Honor And Glory

(Mary Lazare)

 

            I was wrong about what I’d be doing in early August a year or two from now. I’d still be going to the Capitol, but as a mentor, not a tribute. I wouldn’t become a Victor after my big brother; I’d do so at the same time he did. Patrick and I both knew what we’d do since mid-February. Every 25 years, there was a variation in the rules to the Games, and that change was announced right after the preceding year’s Victory Tour. I still remembered President Snow’s 29 words: _To remind the districts of both the Capitol’s punishment and its mercy, if a tribute’s district partner dies they both die, but the final remaining district pair wins together._

 

This setup seemed to place the odds even more in the Careers’ favor. One of a Career’s biggest threats was their district partner and that obviously wouldn’t be a concern this year. Some other district would have to produce two good tributes to be a threat. If they came up with just one, and the odds often didn’t favor even that, that person could be attacked through their usual cannon fodder of a district partner. Last year, the eighth place Jason and second place Pumpernickel both had district partners fall in the bloodbath. However, both of the District Eleven tributes had made it to the final eight, which I took as a reminder to not dismiss the outer districts this year either. Career tributes often lost when we got even more confident and arrogant than our training justified.

 

            The pairs would need to be even more of a team than usual. This was Patrick’s last Reaping and he too had long since planned to volunteer. I was by far the best choice to go in with him and our Career training academy offered no other pairs that would be remotely as good.

 

It hadn’t been hard to convince our district’s living victors when they voted on who got to volunteer. Most of the twelve saw the sense of it, and we were friends with many of them, especially the most recent ones.

 

Lyme and Brutus had been the first two-year streak in Games history. They wanted us Lazare kids to be the ones to create the first three-year streak. Victor Julianus was also overcome by history, being the first Victor from what were now Career districts. Maria of the 73rd Games was one of my many predecessors amongst knife-throwing District Two gals. That went back to at least Livia Aurelius I in 55, with Enobaria of 62 inbetween, and those two also saw my potential to be their next successor. Cato Adams from last year was one of our many men to be monsters at swords at then some, and my brother was another.

 

My brother and our immediate predecessor were good friends. They would probably even be the attendants in each others’ weddings. We had no idea who would follow our mother Emma in becoming a Mrs. Lazare, but everybody in the District Two Games elite knew darn well Clove Hawkins would become Clove Adams in due time, that time being after she became another victor herself. They had met in training, actually. This year’s change of plans meant I wouldn’t later be competing with Clove for the coveted slot abbreviated as F2.

 

_The Train_

 

            Now I needed to focus on the 22 I was actually competing with for the title of Victor. Our escort Bertlynn, a man not on the tall side, was going on and on about how posh the train was, how good the refreshments were, and so on. He had a point. However, Patrick and I both remained focused on the reaping footage.

 

Lyme and Cato were there with us. Our new Victors did generally start soon as mentors, although not necessarily the year after. Cato wanted to be there for his friend my brother. Also, Mr. Adams probably wanted to make sure he really knew what he was doing when it was his girlfriend going into the arena.It was hardly unheard of for tributes to have an opposite-gender mentor who knew them well. For instance, Cashmere of One may have had her brother Gloss, their father Chrome, or his father Facet. It was indeed typical for our new-Victor mentors to have experienced help, in this case Lyme.

 

District Seven had unintentionally presented a pair, the only other siblings going into this year’s arena together. The odds really weren’t in their favor, both getting reaped like that. It reminded me of one of the rewards District Two got from the Capitol for its loyalty – only a select few had to worry about the Games, those who chose it. Our parents were worried enough even with all the advantages of being a Career. Mom was often worried sick about even far smaller things, so I wasn’t sure whether to take her Justice Building goodbyes more or less seriously. Our father, the first Patrick Lazare, couldn’t show what concern he had, what with being a Mayor.

 

            There were no other mayors’ children amongst the tributes. The District One mayor was childless, and Net’s daughter Coral over in Four simply wasn’t Career material. The families of the Ten, Eleven and Twelve mayors still had to face the reaping, but were at an advantage nevertheless. The upperclass of any district didn’t have to take tesserae, more food in exchange for more reaping entries. Career trainees didn’t have to worry about that anyway. Some of my classmates saw it as a way out of the relatively bad part of our district. 33 years ago, that had worked for Lyme, and the same idea nearly worked for Claudia last year.

 

            Our fellow Career districts also saw the logic of having a particularly good team of volunteers this year. Districts One and Four both put forth a boyfriend and girlfriend pair, all with names that seemed fitting for their district – Amber and Agate, Goldfish and Halibut.

 

I think Olive and Popeye of District Four were the only two-victor couple. They were from the old days, from before even the First Quarter Quell, and here we are going into the arena for the Third. I didn’t know or care when Olive and Popeye’s wedding had been. Some Victors had married soon after their win. This year, each pair of lovebirds was probably hoping to marry after they became Victors together. Well, then, Patrick and I would have to be wedding crashers.

 

District Two’s own Rubeus was gay; even outside of romance, he didn’t act like a typical male, and he wasn’t like the usual person from our district, either. He got more trouble for his demeanor than his love life. Even so, he was generally as respected as any other trainee and later Victor. He proved himself plenty tough enough along with the rest of us. It seems that was part of the reason he had become a Career.

 

Rubeus got hitched two years after his Games, right after Carolus’ last reaping. Waiting at least that long made sense anyway, and it was at least a formality in the Career districts. It was one way in which we put up the pretense of not expecting volunteers, and there were occasional circumstances when there really wasn’t a volunteer.

 

Cecelia Weaver’s Games was before my time, actually from after I had been born but before I had been old enough to pay attention. Nevertheless, I had absorbed plenty about past Games. Every resident of Panem did due to the incessant rebroadcasts, but aspiring Victors studied that history particularly carefully. The boyfriend back home was part of her angle, and he proposed as soon as she returned a Victor.

 

One of their daughters had gotten reaped this year! Well, every district child was subject to that, including victors’ progeny as well as that of mayors. Daughters who were the second of their mother’s name weren’t so common as sons named after their fathers, but being the same idea, it was unsurprising that it happened sometimes. We knew another one of those from the academy; Livia’s daughter hoped to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

 

A lot of people becoming neither tributes nor Peacekeepers got married right after the younger spouse’s last Reaping. The parents of our second cousin and fellow Career trainee Quentin Lancaster II had done so. As one of District Two’s elite families, we had access to good civilian jobs. Those of us who had chosen the Games hadn’t done so as an alternative to being a Peacekeeper. My father had been in the force. He had risen to command of the District Two garrison. It turns out our district had needed a new mayor was needed soon after my father’s service commitment was up, and his particular experience made him a good fit for the job.

 

Goldfish was commonly known as Goldie, Halibut as Hal. Patrick and I got along fairly well with them, but Patrick did not care for Agate making an incest joke, and Agate found himself lucky tributes were not allowed to fight until the start of the Games.

 

Cecelia’s daughter had the best angle besides us or the lovebirds, but considering her small young frame and that of her district partner Needle Loom, a good angle wasn’t likely to get her much of anywhere. Would she follow her mother’s stealthy strategy or not do that because it’s what the other tributes would be expecting?

 

District Twelve had no luck in the Games except for Quarter Quells, and it looked like even that was coming to an end. The boy Isaac Miller was one of the twelve year olds reaped this year. The girl Sophia Farmer was a year older but even scrawnier than her district partner.

 

Lily Collins of the first Quell was one of the old Victors who was dead by now. That seemed like it was to be expected even though there were a few living Victors who won before her, and a few dead ones from after her. Haymitch Abernathy of the second Quell was barely alive. With 24 going on 25 unsuccessful years as a mentor, no wonder he drank so much.

 

Haymitch’s fate was inconceivable in District Two, especially with us at two going on three successful years in a row. Because we had so many Victors, the mentoring duty was more evenly distributed. Well, it was time to go make our own dreams happen.

 

_The Hovercraft_

 

A tribute dying when their district partner did would be implemented through a rigged tracking device. So the injections on the hovercraft to the arena seemed to hurt a little more, or at least people thought they did. “They’re acting like this thing is full of eels,” Hal muttered.

 

The Cornucopia was in the center of a lake. The platforms that lifted us into the arena were in the water rather than on the beach. It seems Goldie and Hal of Four were definitely the ones to watch out for here. They were both only a few platforms to my left. As soon as the gong went off, I saw them make graceful dives into the water; they were well on their way to the Cornucopia when the other tributes, including us, were just getting started.

 

There were thin land bridges pointing to the supplies. There were two tributes between each. The boy from Five was in the same section as me. Our arena outfits made good swimsuits. This included the purple belts being flotation devices, which helped me bob towards a rocky shore. I made it to the nearest land to run the rest of the way. I saw Patrick three bridges to my right, and in racing to the Cornucopia, we made this part of the distinctly unfriendly competition a friendly one.

 

Patrick of all people knew to get me some knives. While he picked out a sword, Cecelia Weaver II who had started out from a platform between ours was my first target. _Let the Games begin_ , I thought as I got the first kill. Needle Loom fell instantly along with her. Agate stabbed Douglas, the boy from Seven, as he was going for an axe, and so Logroll was felled. Agate’s blade really did the Career Alliance a favor by eliminating one of the greatest threats to it. His partner Amber had what looked like the same model of dagger, and her copy found a place in the back of the fleeing girl from District Three.

 

A lull in the fighting came relatively quickly this year; had there been three kills or six, really? Even the latter was a short bloodbath. However, my brother was one of those eager to get the cannons firing again.

 

He figured it was time to stop pretending he was getting along with Agate. This was an early disintegration of the Career alliance, to be sure, but that would have come eventually anyway. It came now. Agate saw the charge, but there was no way a dagger-wielder could fend off a swordsman. Agate knew that, and his attempt to throw a blade was downright embarrassing, especially since his weapon was not built for it. Amber reacted with the reflexes expected of a Career, but so did I. I didn’t hit her, but I did keep her away from my brother’s attack on her boyfriend. Agate dodged, but not enough to keep Patrick’s blade from cutting his throat. One of the blades I had thrown merely as cover fire took out the pair from Twelve. That was it for this echo of the bloodbath.

 

“Now I’m even more sure we got this,” Patrick told me afterwards.

“Yeah, but we gotta get some food though,” I countered. The Cornucopia was nothing but weapons. It reminded me of a few years back, I think the 68th Games won by Regina of District Three, when spiked maces were the only weapons available. Ironically, I saw none of those this year. “And some water,” I belatedly added to what I told my brother. It was clear the lake was saltwater; you didn’t need to be from District Four to know you couldn’t drink that stuff. Lyme apparently decided on the brute-force solution, sending us sponsor gifts of stuff to eat and drink. Goldie was using her trident to spear fish while Hal dived for seafood. We traded. “Kinda cool to have bread that ain’t loaded with salt and seaweed,” Hal said to review our small dark rectangular loaves.

 

 _That made it the only cool thing here, then_ , I half-jokingly thought to myself. As we went away from the beach, we found a steep hill that magnified the effects of the stifling heat. That and the dense forest seemed the same all around the beach.

 

I always thought the time when it’s just starting to get dark sucks; for some tribute on the other side of the lake, it might be the last thing they thought. We rushed to the commotion, running around the sandy edge rather than trying to traverse any of the rough land bridges through the middle in this half-darkness.

 

We found the girl from Six holding a bloody knife; she tossed it into the woods rather than let Hal grab it. However, Hal grabbed her collar and dragged her to the shore to hold her underwater. Her district partner tried to save her, but Goldie chased him away with that trident. That was much like how I had kept Amber from interfering with Patrick’s killing of Agate. Goldie also found a secondary target, later reporting it was the pair from Ten.

 

The nightly recap explained it was a District Eleven tribute’s blood on the District Six girl’s knife. I did indeed count sixteen portraits, the last being that of my second target Isaac Miller. One day in, and we were already down to the final eight.

 

Four’s last Victor was Anemone Cresta five years ago, an about average wait for a Career district. Five and Nine were both looking at their first victory in a bit under a decade, which would be much quicker than usual for any non-Career district except perhaps Three. Yet it was time for District Two to win an unprecedented third straight. Despite District One falling out of the Career alliance in dramatic fashion, Two and Four were sticking together until the end, until we found Five and Nine.

 

We went to bed after a lightning storm, and had a peaceful night except for being woken up at dawn by the echoes of explosions.

 

However, the arena had apparently found one of the other pairs for us. We heard two cannons go off mid-morning and didn’t spend too much time thinking about how they were fired for. As usual, at the end of the day we’d find out who died, if the Games even went that long. I think we wanted to make it a moot point by finding the other. We weren’t too concerned by who’d we be facing; each pair had one good tribute and a mediocre district partner.

 

With only one other pair left, we started to keep some distance from the school of fish and the feeling was mutual. Once the remaining non-Career pair died, whether at the hands of a Career or the arena, neither of us wanted to be the victim of a surprise attack that would end the Games.

 

We had been sent some fruit for dinner. The hard skin necessitated the use of one of my nonbloodied knives; I was not the sort of girl to have the fingernails for such a task. The little fruits were green, but had a sharp flavor and pulpy consistency similar to oranges.

 

The explosions near sunset sounded similar to those from the dawn, just as muffled in the distance. They must have been deadly as well as loud, as we then heard the two clear booms of death cannons. So it has come to this. Goldie came running like a woman possessed. Patrick’s sword was better-suited to fighting off a trident than my knives, so I zeroed in on Hal.

 

Hal ran for the lake; I wouldn’t try to run uphill through dense vegetation in partial darkness either. I couldn’t shoot very well at a target in the water, even if I didn’t care about getting the knives back, especially when that target was someone who had been swimming his entire life. I gave chase anyway, to get him while he was still on land. Yet he moved fluidly even on solid ground, and smart enough to run in a zigzag pattern, so he made it into the water.

 

I turned back to watch Patrick’s duel with Goldie. I didn’t want to throw, for fear of hitting him and thus me. She used her trident’s prongs to catch my brother’s blade, but the flat side of that sword just as surely deflected her spear shaft.

 

I kept Hal pinned down in the lake, but he kept me pinned down watching the lake. I turned back to the other fight. The fisherman took bait instead of using it. He rose from the water and I turned around only to let him tackle me. However, my throwing knives didn’t have to be thrown. They could, say, be used to stab someone in the chest. Things had gone as planned for the Lazare siblings.


	10. Double Date

(Sapphire Silversmith)

 

            I’d rather see no Games at all, but it was an improvement for two to survive instead of one and for it to be over quickly. The creators of the Games had probably intended exactly that when writing this Quell rule, to exceed low expectations. Mary and Patrick Lazare would find out that the Capitol treated sisters and brothers no better than any other victors. _Their father was the District Two mayor – would that shield them from Snow’s wrath somewhat or would it provide Snow with additional leverage to use against them?_

 

They’d have to wait to find out that victors’ mansions were an improvement over even mayors’ houses. District Two already had twelve living Victors, so a 13th house would need to be built for the Lazares. Much had been made of how it was unprecedented for a district to have three straight wins, but this year was also the first time any victors village had gone past capacity. Even here in District One, we had four houses unoccupied, our eleven living victors in eight families.

 

It was common for a Victor to take up the Capitol’s offer to invite close family to Victors Village, and this was part of the allure of the Games. However, it was exceedingly rare for those people to be Victors themselves. Those Victors could then invite guests of their own, although that would of course be a moot point in Mary and Patrick’s case.

 

Olive and Popeye of Four had been the first two Victors to share a house. The recent end of the Third Quarter Quell reminded me that those two had married soon after the First. They had a long life together, dying around the same time 45 years later, in the winter before my Games.

 

Amber and Agate had looked especially forward to following in those particular footsteps. I missed the fallen District One ladies, especially since so many of them had aspired to be like me, Cashmere and the rest of us who had survived. Glimmer’s death last year had been the hardest yet; she would’ve been something really special. She had a real gift for working with people, maybe could have ended up mayor.

 

Agate had been the first of Glimmer’s many boys, and over time she had also been seen with more than a few girls. Glimmer had been one of many charmed by my beauty. Alas, I went only one way; else I may have been one of those ladies.

 

Our district’s own Goldmans had been the only multi-Victor family between the District Four couple and the Lazares. Facet won a few years before the first Quell, his son Chrome shortly before the second. Gloss and Cashmere were two of Chrome’s children. Shine was the other, and he may well have volunteered this year if the Quell rule hadn’t led to Agate going in with Amber.

 

They had mixed feelings about this year’s events. Viewers of the Games generally wanted their own district to win, of course, but also tended to have secondary favorites amongst the other tributes. District One had killed one of the sibling pairs and had gotten killed by the other.

 

Facet had mentored Agate this year. “It did make sense to go after Seven, even though they were siblings,” he admitted. _If Douglas had got that axe, they may well have won instead of the sibling pair that did_ , I reflected. “Not so smart to insult Two though,” he reviewed. “Wasn’t exactly surprised when Patrick went after the darn fool, my grandson wouldn’t have acted like that,” he finished, at which point Shine nodded approvingly.

 

“I’m happy for Patrick and Mary, _sanguis et aqua_ ,” Facet went on. I puzzled over the unfamiliar words. I always saw ‘aqua’ as a part of longer words that related to water, like the ocean-colored gemstone aquamarine (which looked far inferior to sapphires, of course). ‘Sanguis’ reminded me of some medical words.

“Blood and water?” I answered Facet, and he nodded. They didn’t have to compare the bonds between relatives and those forged between friends; they had both.

 

            Naturally, Cashmere and Gloss would lead the celebrations for District One’s part of the Victory Tour.  This came as a relief when I didn’t feel like celebrating much of anything on winter solstice day. I vomited up breakfast and couldn’t hold down much other food later in the day. My mother was one of the few other people in the massive Victors Village house with me, and she said “Am I going to be a grandmother? Looks like morning sickness. Apparently one of those handsome Capitol lads finally did you in.”

 

 _What little she knew._ Snow made me fuck them; his threats included not telling anyone and passing myself off as a happy slut. Many of the so-called men Snow pimped me out to would have been utterly repulsive even if they weren’t rapists. Some of them didn’t care what they were doing to me; some of them even positively enjoyed forcing me into it. There were some exceptions, though. Like the other victors Snow abused, I was often given as a gift, and many of the recipients didn’t know we were prostituted, let alone forced into it.

 

The owner of weapons manufacturer United Steel often got me for his son Vulcan. Vulcan seemed to genuinely love me, and I did well at pretending to have feelings for him in return. He was also the only one I didn’t have to totally fake it with during the sex itself; I really did like the way he massaged my breasts. Well, I had used a United sword to survive the arena and now had to fight with swords of a different kind.

 

Vulcan knew as well as anyone else my taste in weaponry, but was more able to do something about it. Around my 19th birthday, he got me a copy of the four-foot longsword I knew so well, but with the plain hilt replaced with a pink Venus mirror; the circle seemed a good addition to a crossguard. It was the perfect gift for me. A blade like this should have a name, and I immediately thought of _Amazon_ after stories I had read about a society of female fighters. I wanted to run it through his father, Snow, and all manner of other Capitol criminals. However, since I obviously couldn’t say that, I giggled and responded with “I bet you have another sword for me.”

 

Snow was not going to take the joy of sex away from me, so I still plenty often fucked who I wanted to, even though it contributed to his ‘victors on the prowl’ illusion. Back when I was training for the Games, I had spread my legs for many of the District One male victors, and after I won, many an Academy boy had gotten my body as an eighteenth birthday present. We always waited; since training for the Games was supposedly highly illegal, we made sure to not add age of consent violations to the pile. For those who fell in the arena, and I’d lost four so far, my cunt must’ve been one of the better memories of their short lives. Even the boys who had fucked before were in awe as I exposed my massive breasts and gyrated my thick hips, and it generally didn’t take long for them to spill their seed in me.

 

Yet whether handsome District One boys or decrepit old Capitol men, the male seed wasn’t supposed to take root in me. Castle brand birth control injections were a marvel of Capitol technology and I of all people knew how to use the simple method, so I must’ve gotten a bad batch. _Knowing Coriolanus Snow, the dictator who called himself president, heads might really roll._

 

Mother said the vomiting usually started about a month and a half in. So I probably got knocked up during my mid-November trip to the big city. A Capitol couple had paid Snow for two Victors, the other being Gloss. Appropriately, he was for once away from his sister Cashmere. He fucked the wife while the husband fucked me, and the two got off watching the Victors fuck each other. Did I carry the next generation of Goldmans or just another out-of-wedlock child for the Capitol man?

 

The test the doctor ran was hardly just pissing on a stick. That was a fairly reliable yes/no as to whether the woman was pregnant. This also extracted a DNA sample from the fetus. When the results came back, I learned I was going to have one daughter, and it was clearly Gloss’. I was reminded of getting our fingers pricked at each Reaping; the Capitol certainly had our DNA on file. The way Gloss worshipped his younger sister, he’d almost certainly want another ‘Cashmere’. Since I was such good friends with her, I’d have no objections to naming my daughter after her.

 

            I figured it was wise to make sure Snow heard it directly from me. A Victor was one of the few people who had any power to get through the people screening Snow’s calls. “Gloss impregnated me during the orgy at the Travers place.”

I heard him breathing as he thought it over for a few minutes. _When Snow puts you on hold, you shut up and go on hold._ “You’re marrying him on New Years’ Day in the Capitol,” he eventually said simply. _With those simple words, another freedom was taken away, and we had to take it with a smile. And our lives would of course be turned into a public spectacle once again._

 

_A Sudden Wedding_

 

Gloss and I were summoned to the Capitol a few days later to slap together the ceremony. I expected the other District One victors to join us, especially since three of them were Gloss’ sister, father and grandfather. However, it was a surprise to see several of our comrades from other districts. Most of the District Four contingent was here for some reason.

 

When Snow came to summon us, Annie and Finnick knew he was talking to them as well as me and Gloss. What Snow said seemed so reasonable at face value, but we knew the force that lurked beneath.

 

“Cashmere would think that only another Victor is good enough for her big brother,” Snow pointed out.

 

“True enough,” Gloss admitted. No wonder handsome, rich, famous Gloss had been single until now. Cashmere had chased other females away and Gloss hadn’t chased after them.

 

I would’ve thought of having it aborted had Snow not ordered another resolution. Snow worried about the population crisis, although fueled by the policy he perpetuates, and had said that such a high-profile abortion would’ve further disenheartened the districts about reproduction. There was no way I could’ve gotten that taken care of without somebody talking.

 

Annie related some of what Snow had told the both of them. ‘With the cover story that you’re on the prowl, eventually you’d find someone. I want to make my deniability somewhat plausible, you’ll understand. You met Miss Cresta after she won, understand?’

 

Snow was evil but not stupid. Annie and Finnick’s feelings for each other were obvious. The group from Four might have been pushed past the breaking point to see some other pair of Victors get married. Annie and Finnick’s happiness could distract from any misgivings over my pregnancy-prompted union to Gloss. Speaking of which, the country was unaware of my situation. As far as most people knew, Cashmere Goldman II would be a wedding night conception.

 

Gloss was certainly doing his damndest so far, quite a charmer outside of his little sister’s shadow. We were both somewhat desensitized to superb physiques after spending most of our lives around a Career training academy, yet there was no way we could ignore each other’s physical presence. Gloss was tall, but not quite as tall as me, much to my chagrin.

 

Gloss and Finnick would be wearing the bright white suits typical of Capitol grooms. This of all days would not be an exception to wearing the deep blue of the stone I was named after. My unique proportions would have necessitated something rather customized anyway.

 

Stephanie The Stylist was glad to do a favor for one of her successful tributes; she definitely had shown she could accentuate the looks of people who were already beautiful. “Sapph, you’re the prettiest woman in the world, and Steph’s just made ya look even better,” Gloss reviewed. I was used to hearing such things, so there was no red on my cheeks to join the blue on my body, yet I wasn’t used to hearing them said so sincerely.

 

Steph measured Annie for an aquamarine version, yet it may as well have been an entirely different design. Well, my immediate predecessor was lovely in her own way; there must be something special about her for a man like Finnick to be so devoted. However, the arena seemed to have affected her even more than it did the rest of us.

 

Annie’s long brown hair seemed naturally curly. Cashmere set her blond locks into bouncy curls. I had my similarly yellow strands hanging straight down past my shoulders. A Capitol jeweler gave me the biggest sapphire he could fit on a one-finger setting. He gave Gloss a plain gold band, but the size of that ring was similarly imposing. Annie and Finnick had jewelry that meant far more than even the most extravagant Capitol pieces, rings that had been on the fingers of District Four Victors before. Olive and Popeye had lived long enough to see their successors’ feelings for each other, and had willed their rings to the next generation. They were beautiful etched platinum, the ladies one set with a pearl.

 

Cecelia and Rubeus were the only two married Victors alive, both to non-tributes they had known since before their respective Games. They would likely be watching the broadcast closely. Of course there would be a broadcast. Snow was probably doubly pleased that Gloss had knocked me up at a slow time of year.

 

Gloss’ mother, and his father’s mother, were both nowhere to be seen. They had never been much of a presence, and weren’t about to start now, apparently. “Finally one of the men in this family has some serious luck with the ladies” it was said of me.

 

News of the two engagements had spread rapidly over the past week, making us the toast of the town except amongst the customers who had lost us to people we actually loved, imagine that. The people involved in the weddings all gathered on New Years’ Eve in one of our Capitol apartments. We stayed away from the massive public galas to help be ready for the big day.

 

The two weddings would take place simultaneously in Capitol Hall, a building large and luxurious even by Capitol standards. Cashmere ran between the changing rooms helping both of the brides.

 

“Will you be the husband this lovely lady deserves?” my mother Lotus said to challenge Gloss, a key part of our wedding traditions.

“I will!” he exulted.

“Will you be the wife this gallant gentleman deserves?” Chrome said similarly.

“I will,” I answered solemnly. As Chrome flipped the veil over my head, I leaned down a bit to kiss him, a move he knew well from his encounters with average-sized girls.

 

Annie and Finnick told the wonderful story of their rings. District Four had all sorts of nautically-themed wedding rituals, but the most important part was the bride and groom almost catatonic with joy. They really would captain each others’ hears forever, it seemed. Before the start of their wedding song, they had all the married couples in the audience come to the front of the hall. Annie and Finnick’s parents were still happy together, as well as mine, even though Gloss’ weren’t. It took me and Gloss a few seconds to realize that we could go up there too. Sapphire _Goldman_. Year _76._ I had a lot to remember starting today.

 

The new two-Victor couples were the official witnesses for each other. Mentors often signed off for married victors, but relatives of the marrying couple couldn’t do so in general.

 

My new husband sure knew how to fuck, a silver lining of the horrible way he had gained experience, and Annie had confided something similar about Finnick. The way Gloss massaged my back while pretending to get the gown off and the way he fingered me once he actually did had me begging. Normally it was the boys I worked up to a fever pitch, and normally this boy didn’t get to make love to women even taller and more muscular than he was. He moved my legs apart to slide between them with what was between his.

 

He knew how lucky he was to have me, even under these circumstances, and I let myself be swept away by how he expressed his appreciation. Well, I could do a lot worse, and we’d make this work.


	11. Courage and Sacrifice

(Livia Aurelius II)

 

            The odds were in my favor. They always had been, but this was a particularly auspicious year. Mary and Patrick had done the unprecedented last year, and I faced the honor of building upon it. Mother would be even more proud.

 

            The Games ran in the family. Mom had won the 55th. The final fight had been against her district partner Julius Adams. He died not knowing his girlfriend back home was pregnant, and his son went on to win a Games. Cato was good at it to be sure, but he hadn’t faced competition like my mother. Any personal grudge was fading – Victors understood that was business.

 

He’d met his match in one of the other Academy girls. Her 17th birthday was approaching, which would make her old enough for Cato. He’d be up all night in more ways than one. If they wanted to settle down, that was their business. Same for Annie and Finnick, Sapphire and Gloss.

 

Clove Hawkins would likely make it five in a row for District Two after I extended our streak to four. She would’ve stood a chance even before allowing her skills to fully develop, but that was a moot point. Besides Cato and I, last year’s special rules allowed our mayor’s children to win together. The young man was also parentname the second.

 

I would be the fourth child of a Victor to triumph. Many victors’ children had died in years past, but they weren’t Careers.

 

My birthday fell about three weeks before Clove’s. For my 18th, I’d likely treat myself to another one-night stand. This was another trait I got from my mother. She said she didn’t need men except for fucking, and I turned out quite alright. She didn’t even know who had impregnated her, and we didn’t care to look into it. Maybe I was a result of a Peacekeeper’s indiscretion. Yet one of the Academy boys was probably responsible. If the guys in her day looked anything like the current crop, I couldn’t say I blamed her. We were almost too comfortable talking about sex.

 

My legs and chest were twigs and pebbles compared to my mother’s frame. However, we were more alike than not. We both had the arm strength and eyesight necessary for being the best at knife-throwing. She and the other Victors taught me to not act too alike in the arena, because other tributes would see that coming.

 

On my birthday, I awoke to a knock on my door. I opened my chamber to find out who was behind the long hard pounding. I’d been hammered by a towering young man. He was lean, and must’ve been nearly seven feet tall. “Blasius Aquila,” he introduced himself. “Your momma said you might like me. She sure is lucky to have a daughter as hot as you.” I ran my hand along his smooth face. I liked my boys to shave so they didn’t itch me and especially didn’t scratch my cunt.

“And the odds are in my favor to have a man as good looking at you in my room,” I answered after he walked in and closed the door behind him. “Happy birthday to me!” I said with a flourish as I loosened my robe and let it fall to the floor. As usual, I was wearing nothing underneath my sleep clothes.

He was already shirtless and wasn’t wearing much below the waist either. He wrapped his arm around me to pull us closer together, pressing his bulge into my midriff. He certainly had plenty of one. It didn’t feel like it would be so big as to be painful, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

He let go of me to pull down his shorts, about the only excuse I’d accept at that point. I wasn’t acting for his sake when I displayed myself as wantonly as possible, hips thrust into the air. Blasius gladly accepted the invitation, nudging me down onto the bed and thrusting into me significantly less gently. I loved the feeling of him cumming inside me, since I knew nothing would come of it.

Apparently something had come of it for Sapphire, and she found herself wanting to settle down, anathema to my mother even in that situation

 

After this serving of dick, I especially needed my regular breakfast. Blasius was also hungry for regular food now. _Definitely one of the more pleasant workouts there was_ , I thought to myself with a smile.

 

We dressed and found Mom with her latest man next to the kitchen. “Great minds think alike, eh, old man?” Blasius announced. Apparently Mom was having her own fun with his father Cornelius. Them being so close seemed to further embolden the two of us.

“Wasn’t your mind you were thinking with, stud,” I told Blasius. He didn’t strike me as stupid, though. I had no patience for that. In the arena it was death, and I couldn’t tolerate it in regular life either.

 

“It’s said that older lovers are more experienced. Dear, now that you’re 18, you can find that out for yourself,” Mom said. Apparently she wanted to share, and the older Aquila licking his lips indicated he liked the idea, and probably that the two of them had planned for this to escalate. “I wouldn’t mind a reminder of how energetic younger lovers are,” she added.

“Like father like son and like mother like daughter,” I answered

 

            “I want both of you well-built ladies,” the older Aquila confessed. “Livia the first knows how good I fuck, and you should know too.”

            “I can see where your daughter gets it from,” Blasius said to compliment both of us.

“I certainly like to think I have enough man in me to make two women happy,” Cornelius offered.

For all four of us, the odds were in our favor to all have two lovers today.

            “You can come too,” I suggested to Blasius. I wanted both of them to be blowing my mind, and I wouldn’t mind blowing either of them.

            “Oh, I will!” he smirked.

“Two men pleasuring you at the same time is even more amazing than one,” my mother said, speaking from experience. “I want a turn.”

 

            None of us could focus on our toast and fruit. Yet we made sure to clear the table for the _activities_ to come. Career training did instill the virtues of planning. We had a prime reason to move the dishes now but wash them later. District Two life was simple enough to not have servants even if you could afford them. Besides, a staff could present a security risk.

 

Rapidly getting wetter, I climbed right up onto the table in an incredibly fluid move. Being athletic was hardly limited to the arena, after all. I lay down and pointed my legs towards the end of the table where Cornelius was now standing. “Let’s see if you’re as good as your son,” I said to egg him on. He rolled up my skirt and pulled off my underwear. He seemed to find my limbs just as pleasurable to spread, my smooth pink jewel soon becoming visible to his hungry eyes.

Cornelius leaned into me, bracing himself with arms on the table next to me waist. He had quite a way of working his hips as he thrust.

            Blasius reached down my blouse, and I opened the top few buttons to give him a breast. He was working that nipple as eagerly as he had sucked on them maybe an hour ago.

 

I was already ecstatic thanks to his dad’s dick, and the rush of male attention drove me over the edge. Well, not literally, although it took strong men like them to keep me on top of the table when I started coming. Blasius finally left my chest alone so I could lean up to kiss Cornelius. I could barely wrap my arms around his shoulders, but we loved the taste of each others’ lips all the same.

 

I dressed just enough to walk to my room; Blasius yanked the clothes right back off me. He tossed them and his own all over the floor.

            I wanted the young man filling my pussy again, but had plans for the other cock too. Cornelius still had my juices on him and I licked them off before swallowing as much of the shaft as I could.

Once Blasius finished and took his hands off my ass, Cornelius led us to my mother’s room. She was already naked and touching herself. “Apparently you liked your birthday present, dear,” she said in a ragged voice.

“Oh yes, they even unwrapped themselves,” I joked back. “Two Aquila men can more than take care of one Aurelius woman, now let’s see what one of them can do with both of us.”

“Seems my daughter hasn’t worn you two out yet,” she announced appreciatively. Mother steered Cornelius towards her, hips in the air. I sat on Cornelius’ shoulders facing him. He flicked his mouth over my button while Mother steered him towards her. We all swayed together, and the first climax set off a domino effect.

 

            Blasius soon came into the room. This was all well and good, because Cornelius needed a rest. I starting sucking off the young man at the foot of the bed. He decided to tease my mother, which she tolerated, having been satiated by the previous activities. His fingers went down her sides and his tongue down her stomach rather than either being plunged directly into her. “Your legs look so thick and juicy, I could just eat them right up,” he panted. Our healthy lifestyle did give us fine muscles and curves, I had to say.

            “How about just what’s between them?” she said between heavy breaths. He leaned her back onto the bed, began licking her right inner thigh, his tongue tracing its way up her leg as slowly as possible. This could make things even more wild when actually reaching the top. Then he dropped the pretense. “Happy birthday,” Mom mumbled before she turned back onto her side to take a nap.

“It certainly was happy with both of those wonderful men involved,” I answered on the way to my own bed.

 

This was a fun part of turning eighteen – well, several fun parts. I turned my attention back to a serious responsibility of that age which faced me this summer.


	12. A Family Affair

(Phillip Mellark)

 

Rory and Prim were yet again watching their nephew Jacob together; one could tell that they’d be wonderful parents some day. That was good so Katniss wasn’t occupied on for her 18th birthday party.

 

            “I can see where Katniss gets it from,” Peeta said to Ingrid to compliment both Everdeens. Ingrid had definitely filled out with a healthy amount of food, I felt. She had a naturally thick frame to begin with. I remained muscular. She even saw my bakery burns as marks of character; those scars had been one of many things for Priscilla to be petty about.

After all, we couldn’t eat too much of our own work. As my father told me, “don’t get fat on your own supply”. As he said more recently, “second time’s the charm”.

Ingrid and I were each much happier with each other, it showed, and the people around us appreciated that. Those who didn’t understand, we didn’t want around us. Ingrid’s so called family still hated her for Jacob. Prim was treated like a Townie because she looked the part. Admittedly, she was a more agreeable person than her sister in general. Either way, I essentially had the daughters I’d always wanted.

 

Our new mayor could be rather obnoxious in person, but he was a relatively benign ruler. I couldn’t imagine Thread being any harsher, but at least Larkin didn’t seem to be encouraging him. In a cruel irony, the new Capitol authorities had calmed down somewhat because their initial arrival had cleared out most of the troublemakers.

Priscilla was getting along well enough with Fergus. Knowing her, that could be an act to attach herself to his power. _Was she even capable of pretending to be kind?_ I thought to myself bitterly. Yet maybe he was a better match for her like how Ingrid was right for me. Likewise, his ex-wife certainly seemed happy with her second husband.

 

As I walked through the house, I noticed that Peeta had tossed clothes all over the floor. _He may be nearly eighteen, but some things never change._

 

“No wonder my mother’s so happy lately, having a great man in her life again,” Prim observed. She was one of those people who were smarter than their age indicated. Rory seemed to appreciate what a special girl she was. Ingrid wished more people could understand a Seam guy being a gentleman.

 

Ingrid was waiting in my room. She was already naked, and she was already touching herself. Seems we’d also be having fun tonight.

 

After I exploded into and slid out of her yet another time, she bent down and wiggled her hips at me. “I want it there too,” she said, even more seductive than when this evening started. I was only too glad to explore the sensation. _The back was even tighter than the front_ , I thought as I pushed in.

 

This was a glowing yet not genteel situation. So I waited until morning. “Will you marry me?” I said simply as soon as she had woken up.

“You do make my life a lot sweeter, and I’d love to be baked into it,” she said cheerfully. “Seems our children won’t be far behind.” We wouldn’t tell them right away, in case they took the announcement as pressure. Would Peeta and Katniss be ready right after their last reaping? August 2nd was a day for young lovers, but we felt young again, and we wouldn’t be the first older couple to join the party. She might find it a fine way to celebrate her birthday.

 

(Rory Hawthorne)

 

            It was my little angel’s fourteenth birthday, and amongst other things, that meant she could make love to other fourteen year olds. Even though we might not go all the way, Prim had still taken some of the herbs. We’d be doing something special with each others’ bodies, whatever it was. The people around us knew that too, giving us knowing glances as we went into her room alone.

 

            I stripped for her, being careful not to release my equipment from my undershorts until the last move. “Wow, looks like Katniss was right about how big Hawthorne men are,” she said appreciatively. “But I’m kinda scared how much it would hurt _there_ ,” she said, hesitating. _I couldn’t blame her – even an older woman who was used to it might be._

            “I’d never hurt my little angel,” I said to reassure her of what we both knew. “I’m not scared of how big you are,” I joked. _Her breasts were growing quite large - as she turned from a cute girl into a beautiful woman, I was becoming even more fascinated with her._ She quickly pulled her blouse over her head to show them to me - fascinating through the fabric, alluring without it, intoxicating when she freed them from the bra cups. So huge and so perfect. As pale as the rest of her, but with a small dark circle surrounding the nipple.

            This was hardly the first time she made me stiff, but we hadn’t shown it to each other before. I brushed my tip against each breast, and then rested it between them. It felt so good to slide my length between her, and even more so when she pressed each half of her chest together. The white stuff sprayed out of me and onto her face.

            She wiped some of it off and then licked her finger. “You really are a sweet boy,” she joked.

            “It’s fun when I do that to myself thinking about you, but it’s even better when you do it to me,” I confessed to her.

 

(Peeta Mellark)

 

            Katniss’ birthday had been a couple weeks ago, and now it was my turn. I went right into our room after dinner to find her standing in front of the bed still clothed. _I’d be standing up soon enough myself._ “Unwrap me,” she purred. I had done that to her plenty of times, so I wasn’t nervous at all as my hands revealed her body.

            I was still discovering all the soft spots on Katniss, and felt her legs were getting even more pleasurable to spread. The glistening hair and pink jewel in the middle drew me in, my tongue tracing its way up her thighs, all the more pleasurable when I actually reached the top. When holding her close, I savored how her soft breasts squished against my chest.

The sounds of our pleasure were art to my ears. “Happy birthday,” Katniss mumbled before turning on her side to fall asleep.

I slid next to her and answered, “It certainly was happy with you in it.”

“And you in me,” she added with a smile.

 

Somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew. I was even more numb to that feeling after losing both my brother and a friend two years ago. Pan was getting along well enough. It seemed he had to, because of his own kids, and those babies helped him along.

 

            There was a summary of reapings in the afternoon. With that, we had to start watching the Games right away. This was one of many things Cray had been lenient about. In District Two, a victor’s daughter volunteered. The other Livia Aurelius smiled from the victors’ section of the stage. What sort of parent celebrated their child becoming a tribute? In those districts, there was a much better chance of returning alive, but death was still likely. Well, victors often didn’t seem clear-minded.

 

            I was still absolutely sure that I wanted to become Katniss Everdeen’s husband. I loved her close even more than I had from a distance. In the years between when I threw her the bread and when we really met, she’d thought about me more than she’d admitted. “You’re the key ingredient in my recipe for a happy life. Will you marry me?” I asked as we walked away from the town square.

            “Yes, yes, yes” she said breathlessly. “Love is a dish I never thought I’d want, but you serve it so well.”

 

            “I feel I am ready to get married,” Katniss announced as she walked in the door.

            “So do I,” her mother answered.

            “Great minds think alike,” my father added, smiles all around.

 

            Just over two years ago, before I gave Katniss my virginity, she had waited patiently while I drew her naked. Now I sketched a regular portrait of her mother. Most importantly, it featured the look of contentment that had been brought back to her face during these last two years, with many more to come.

 

            I was so happy to share a toasting loaf with Katniss to use for its intended purpose, and set another aside for Dad as well.

 

            We stood out in the Justice Building crowd. Livia Aurelius II wasn’t the only young woman following in her mother’s footsteps this season. “They’re each so good to both of us,” Ingrid said, feeling no need to suppress a smile.


End file.
